Beasts and Men
by skyle
Summary: *Chapter 6 Up!* Angel spills what she knows of the Volpehart story--while surrounded by damp and half-naked teenage boys--yet another Foot Headquarters break-in plan is hatched, and the ex-turtles are forced to hit the mall. Pity the mall.
1. The Beast

Author's Notes: I can't believe that years after I've gotten over my childhood TMNT obsession, I'd end up writing fic about the new series. All characters, places, and scenarios within belong to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Mirage Studios.

Inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here" from the original cartoon. If you know what happens in this ep, then you know what happens here. This takes place after the "Ninja Tribunal" storyline (what I've seen of it, anyway).

* * *

Beasts and Men  
Chapter One: The Beast  
by Skyle

_Better suffer a great evil than do a little one._  
—Henry George Bohn

* * *

_You _will _have the world_, it whispered. _I will give you the means, and you will not refuse._

* * *

Leonardo woke.

His first thought was: _Not again_.

He was inside what seemed to be an oversized fruit, drenched in a familiar goop. Everything was lit in an unsettling shade of red.

His second thought was to wonder whether he was in yet another mind-trap. The last time he'd woken up in this particular pod, he'd been subjected to visions of a disappointed or dying Splinter (the former being just as terrible as the latter). He liked to think that his mental fortitude had improved since then, but the truth was that even now he was hard-pressed to tell if this was the real world or another simulated nightmare.

Then again, the last time he'd escaped, he'd managed to rouse himself with no help from anyone. Did that mean that this was the "real" reality?

He pulled one of his katanas out of its sheath, noticing that unlike last time, the cell seemed solid on all sides, with the most transparent part directly over his head. No matter—the katana sliced easily through the membranous material, and he pulled himself out through the hole, choosing not to think about how much it felt like hatching from an egg.

The caverns underneath the Volpehart building had changed a bit since the turtles' last eventful visit: the walls and ceiling were still studded with pods (each containing a corpse) like larvae cells in a beehive, but the massive central platform now had a sizable crack zigzagging across it, a remnant of the turtles' clash with Volpehart's alien beast. The chunk of meteorite and the huge bonfire that housed it were gone, having been knocked into the chasm by the beast's massive falling body after Leonardo had slain it with the meteor spear. Without the extra illumination afforded by the fire, the entire chamber was darker than usual; the very air was still, dust motes drifting lazily in the meager shafts of light that pierced the gloom. It appeared, for all intents and purposes, like the cave had not been breached by anything living for hundreds of years.

Leonardo knew better than to take anything in this place at face value.

He surveyed the semi-darkness for any faintly glowing cells, and spotted one not far from his. He was upon it in seconds.

Inside, to his surprise and faint disappointment, he found none of his brothers. Instead it was a young man with strawberry blond hair, twitching in his slumber. It took Leo all of two seconds to decide that risking discovery was worth saving a life. After all, he _had _managed to convince people that they had been hallucinating giant mutated turtles before.

"Hey. Wake up."

The youth whimpered under his breath as he clawed his way back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and blinked up at his rescuer. "Leo?"

Leonardo paused. How did this human know his name? Was he a friend of Casey's? Or maybe he'd known of the turtles from Angel's brother? "Listen, we're getting out of here. Can you stand?"

"Yeah, I think so," the young man slurred. He blinked up again. "Hey, you're not Leo."

Leo opened his mouth to correct him, but was distracted by pulsing red spots at the corners of his peripheral vision. He vaulted over toward the nearest glowing pod and slashed it open. "Guys?"

This one contained another human, also a young male. He was tossing and turning and snarling in his sleep, but he was right on the verge of waking up, so Leo moved on to the next pod. Its prisoner was human as well, this time a brown-haired young man. As he began to stir, Leonardo did a sweep of the chamber one more time for any more glowing cases, and felt a rush of consternation when he could not find any.

"Hey, where's Leo? I thought I heard Leo!"

Leo turned back toward the blond-haired male who was climbing out of his cell. He looked thoroughly bewildered—an expression Leo suspected he was starting to duplicate. For one thing, he could have sworn that was Mikey's voice, except it was the human who was speaking, and he sure didn't look like Michelangelo, save for that orange headband dangling across his brow…

"How'd you know Leo? And where the _shell_ is he?"

That was Raph's voice, Leo thought. But the speaker wasn't Raph—he was the human male who'd been snarling in his sleep. He was currently poking his slime-coated head out of his pod and scowling at the other two.

"I don't know, Raph," said the brown-haired human to his left as he hauled himself out of his own cell. "But I was sure I heard him, too." He rubbed his eyes and did a double take as he swept his gaze over his three companions. "Uh…who're you?"

The human with the Raph-voice snorted. "Who're _you_?"

"And how do you know Raph?" demanded the blond male, before rounding in on the male in question. "Waitaminute, who _are _you?"

As the three of them basically parroted each other's questions, Leonardo looked—really looked—at himself. By now his eyesight had adjusted to the dimness, but for a nanosecond he wasn't sure that he was seeing right. For one thing, he was naked—not in that mundane, comfortable, mutated-animal sort of way, but _naked-_naked, in that human-biology-textbook sort of way. The leather strap that was angled across his chest was cold and slack across his skin, no longer held taut by the shell on his back. In fact, there _was _no shell on his back, because he could actually feel the crisscrossed scabbards of his katanas digging into the skin over his spine—and the makeshift belt that had been knotted around his waist now hung loosely across his narrow hips. His blue bandanna had gotten loose from around his eyes and now hung about his throat like a tie. And his hands had two extra fingers on each one: long and slender, and not at all green…

"Guys."

They all fell silent at the authoritative tone in his voice, almost a reflex.

"Anyone who woke up this morning a teenage mutant turtle say, 'aye'."

Leonardo was not surprised to hear a resounding "aye" from all three.

* * *

The day had started out—as usual—pretty innocuously.

They hadn't even gone topside. In fact, they'd been a little sick of it, what with the events from a couple of weeks ago with the whole demon-Shredder/end-of-the-world business. While Splinter had welcomed the chance to be able to meditate without any more nightmarish visions, the turtles had been content to ignore the world of human affairs for a day and try out Don's new and improved hover boards. They'd decided to widen their network of tunnels and secret passages surrounding their new lair, checking out possible detours and potential hiding/storage places. They hadn't even thought to bring a map, choosing instead to revel in the thrill of exploration—and the GPS devices that had been installed in their vehicles. They remembered racing, trying to outdo each other with fancy tricks, Don lecturing about the architecture of the tunnels, Mikey splashing an indignant Raph, Leo having to angle his board between theirs to keep the peace.

That was the full extent of their memories.

* * *

"What the shell happened to us?" roared Raphael. It _had _to be Raphael, if the red cloth twined about his head was any indication.

"Well, duh! We're human!" The blond-haired male peered closer at his irate brother and chortled. "Whoa, Raph, you're a redhead! Why am I not surprised?"

Raphael gave him his patented bop to the back of his skull and shoved him away. "Can it, freakazoid! And stay outta my personal space, or at least cover up your dangly parts first!"

"You cover _your _dangly parts!" countered Mikey. "You're as butt-nekkid as I am! _And _red-haired!"

"This is impossible," Donatello was muttering, staring down at his goo-coated fingers. "It's just not biologically feasible. I mean, it's one thing to integrate human DNA into turtle DNA, but to successfully convert one species into another involves a level of genetics knowledge that's light-years beyond our current scientific know-how—"

"Maybe science has nothing to do with it."

Donatello managed to tear his eyes off of his newly human limbs and turn them on his brother—at least, he _supposed _it was his brother, even if he _was _human and dark-haired and awkwardly holding onto his scabbard strap and belt to keep them from sliding off.

"We're under the Volpehart building," Leonardo went on, his eyes flickering circumspectly about him. "Remember? When we went to find Angel's brother?"

"The time with the undead skeleton dudes and the old guy who turned to ashes and that creepy red giant tentacled monster?" demanded Mikey, his voice rising with every word. He'd had nightmares for a week after that particular adventure, as well as a strange compulsion to ensure that Leo's left arm had not sprouted any strange appendages.

"You think that beast's the one responsible for this? But how?" Donnie looked incredulous. As far as he remembered, the alien beast had relied on walking skeletons and fear-inspiring hallucinations, not species switching. Or perhaps _this _was the hallucination.

"Does it matter?" snapped Raphael. "We woke up stuffed in those cells and we're back in its cave. Who cares about the 'how'—all I wanna know is the 'where' so I can track that ugly mother down and get it ta fix this!"

"But didn't we kill that ancient evil thingy?" demanded Michelangelo.

"Wrong. Leo killed that ancient evil thingy." Raphael turned toward the brown-haired teen. "Ya _did _kill the ancient evil thingy, didn'cha, Leo?"

The brown-haired male held up a sheepish hand. "Um, Raph, it's me, Don." He gestured toward the other dark-haired male. "_That's _Leo."

"Oh." Raphael seemed chagrined, but only for a second, as he shifted his gaze toward the aforementioned teen. He had to admit, this one looked more like Leo, right down to the determined, 'I-am-going-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-this-dammit' expression on his face. "Whatever. Leo?"

"I did kill it. At least, I thought I did." Something was hanging in Leo's eyes, partially blocking his vision. Annoyed, he brushed at it and realized that it was his own hair—thick and pitchblende-black. "It fell down the chasm. We all saw it happen. And Angel said that Mr. Volpehart himself had sensed it was gone before he…disintegrated."

"Hello, refresher course on Ultimate Evil 101, bro," squawked Michelangelo. "Rule number one: they always come back. Always. They _never _stay dead."

As if on cue, a _skritching _sound came from somewhere in the void, like something was rasping its limbs against the limestone walls. A red glow began to bleed through the blackness.

"Don't you all just hate it when I'm right?" Mikey whined as they all reached for their weapons.

"Gee, I dunno, considerin' the fact that that happens like once every ten years," retorted Raphael.

Leonardo almost told them to put a cork in it, but realized that their nattering was more of a cover for their nervousness than anything else. He held his sword in front of him with both hands, trying to calm himself even as he felt twin spikes of adrenaline and fear pump through his veins. In a way, the prospect of fighting in this new human body was more frightening than the monster they were about to face; in all of his previous battles, no matter how impossible the odds had seemed, he at least had the comfort of knowing exactly what his body could or could not do.

Right now he no longer had that tiny advantage.

"Incoming!" Donnie yelled as the edge of the gorge began to crumble.

The creature that emerged from the abyss wasn't even half the size of its predecessor—in fact, it was like comparing a shrimp to a giant squid. But it was still the size of an elephant and its tentacles, though much smaller, had impressive reach—a fact it promptly demonstrated by trying to grab the one nearest to it, which just happened to be Leo.

Leonardo leaped instinctively. In his mind he'd already calculated how much height he needed in his jump to clear the first couple of tentacles, what direction he needed to twist his body once in mid-air, and the location of that safe patch of ground just behind the creature that he could land on safely.

Unfortunately, he had forgotten to factor in the differential between his original muscle strength and his new one, and his leap was decidedly lower than he'd intended.

The second tentacle caught him across his abdomen, sending him hurtling backwards. He was preparing himself to go into a roll when his back struck the cavern wall, quite literally knocking the breath out of him.

Someone shouted out his name—Raphael, probably—as if from a great distance. Leonardo barely heard; he was too preoccupied by the explosion of pure pain where his X-shaped katana sheaths had been crushed between his bare skin and the cavern wall. He never thought he would miss his shell as much as he did just then.

_Note to self: never fall on my back again while carrying my katanas._

Nevertheless, he forced himself on all fours, trying to ignore the sharp throbbing across his wing bones and spine—places that had not been so much as touched his entire life. He raised his head to evaluate the ongoing battle, and was not pleased to see Raph and Don in the creature's clutches. Some yards away, Michelangelo was dancing about, dodging tentacles with a speed that was a fraction of what he was capable of.

Leonardo watched, helpless, as his brother tripped over legs far longer and skinner than the ones he was used to. "Mikey!"

But Raphael was ahead of him; the redheaded male managed to slide one of his arms out of the beast's tentacle grip and stab one of his sais into the soft carmine flesh. The creature barely made a sound, but the tentacle recoiled automatically, giving Raphael enough room to escape, sprint over to his fallen brother, and haul him to his feet. They scarcely had time to retrieve their scattered weapons when the beast trundled over in front of them, the jewel-like entity on its forehead blazing bright. The two boys looked up at it and froze, as though momentarily dazzled by something only they could see in the crimson light.

"Don't look at it!" Leonardo flipped to his feet, relegating his bruises to the back of his mind. He remembered all too well staring into the nucleus of that glow, feeling the first taint of dark power lap at the edges of his soul. He had been on the verge of becoming that thing's puppet—he was not about to see it happen to his brothers.

Donatello's bo came spinning from where he was suspended above, tagging his mesmerized brothers across their knees. Raphael and Michelangelo tumbled backwards, jerked out of the beast's spell. Almost simultaneously, Leo pitched his sword forward, the blade slicing clean through the tentacle that held Donnie prisoner.

The creature roared, more from abject disapproval than pain.

Donatello grunted as he landed hard on his feet, staggering a little before taking back his staff. Raphael and Michelangelo fell into step beside him, breathing hard as they prepared themselves for the second round. Leonardo took a stand several meters away from them, just slightly behind the monster, trying to ignore the discomfort of having his katana holders slap against his sensitive back with every rising movement he made.

"Ow. That hurt more than it should've," Donnie murmured, briefly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"Is it just me, or is this thing a lot faster than before?" Mikey gasped.

"No, we're just slower," snapped Raph, using the blade of his sai to shove his red bangs out of his eyes. "I feel like I'm trapped in that bonehead Casey's body, needin' to lug his overmuscled butt around."

"We're not going to get anything done this way," Donnie said, a half-second before another oversized feeler struck the ground between himself and his brothers. They managed to vault out of the way, but only just. "Any suggestions, Leo?"

But Leonardo was already thinking. What they needed was the meteorite spear, but it had disappeared with the original demise of the creature. Still… "Let's try something similar to last time," he proposed. "Raph, can you hit that gem on its forehead?"

"Are ya kiddin'?" Raphael stepped forward confidently, his sais going into spin mode. It was a trick he could do in his sleep, except this time his ring finger—a thing he'd never had to contend with, ever—got in the way of a prong, causing him to drop his left sai like an amateur. Dumbfounded, he managed to snarl, "_Freakin'_ extra fingers!" before hurling his remaining weapon at the approaching beast.

His dexterity might have been off, but his accuracy was as spot-on as it'd always been: it struck the gem in the middle, a perfect bulls-eye.

The monster's response was to simply pause and pluck the sai out of its skull, easy as you please, as the turtles-turned-humans watched in dismay.

"_Now _what, Fearless Leader?" grumbled Raph, barely avoiding impalement as the creature flicked his own sai toward him.

Leonardo drew out his second sword as his brothers engaged the creature in combat once more. "Give me a minute!"

"Oh, no problem," chirped Michelangelo. " 'Cause it's just sooo much fun jumping around with Mikey Jr. swinging back and forth in the breeze."

"Mikey, I swear if I wasn't fighting for my life here, I'd whack ya," threatened Raphael.

"Just out of curiosity, Mikey, did you ever have a thought you _didn't _want to share?" groaned Don, ducking a wayward feeler.

"Hey, tell me it isn't just a little bit uncomfortable having to fight with your bits flapping around," shot back Michelangelo as he did a double flip between two tentacles. "No wonder humans're obsessed with underwear!"

Leonardo listened to his brothers' chattering with half an ear; his mind was scrolling through all available options. It was clear that the monster was not going to be harmed by anything but the meteorite that had borne it, but its source had long since vanished into the abyss.

On a whim, Leo darted toward the chasm and cast his gaze frantically across the space.

_There!_

Wedged between several shards of cliff-side rock was a fragment of meteorite, probably chipped off of the original mass, glittering through the umbra. Even better, it was on the right side of the opening, close enough for him to reach—if he used his sword to gouge it out.

Leonardo sidled to the very edge of the cliff and stretched out his katana. The point of the blade grazed the shard, dislodging silt and bits of limestone. Around his sword handle his palm had gone cold and sweaty, and Leonardo had a vision of the weapon slipping through his fingers to join the meteorite piece plummeting into the abyss. Gritting his teeth, he wedged the blade tip below the shard, loosening it completely from the rock, and quickly turned the sword on its side to catch it as it toppled over. Slowly, carefully, he pulled back his sword, meteorite piece balanced on the flat of the blade—

Two feet away, a tentacle crashed into the cliff, knocking Leonardo off balance. The shard flew from its cradle.

Without thinking Leo lunged forward and grabbed for it with his free hand, suddenly grateful for his increased reach.

The shard pulsed both warm and cold in his palm. It was the size of an arrowhead (conveniently) and not sharp enough to pierce (unfortunately), but he'd figure a way around that.

Leonardo didn't even have time to breathe a sigh of relief when a second tentacle came plunging toward him. He rolled away, feeling the earth shudder as the monster's limb collided with the ground. He continued rolling until he was back upright, shard firmly in one hand and sword in the other.

"Leo!" Donnie cried.

He looked up, squinting through his damp fringe as he saw that Raphael had once more been captured, his arms properly secured this time. This time the beast was hoisting his brother dangerously close to its maw of a mouth, as if preparing to make a meal out of him. Mikey and Don were scrambling to their feet several hundred yards away, obviously having been struck backwards by the creature's writhing feelers.

Leo's heart sank. He was even farther than Michelangelo and Donatello, too far to reach Raphael in time. He couldn't move any faster, not with his new body, but perhaps _he _wasn't the one that needed to get there fast.

"Guys! Batter up!" Leonardo yelled, and threw the shard as hard as he could.

Mikey spun about, nunchukus whirling, and slammed one end of his weapon against the meteorite piece, sending it in Donnie's direction. The brown-haired male was directly in front of the beast; all he had to do was swing his bo like an all-star and bat the shard toward where it had to go.

The creature wailed as the meteorite made contact with its illuminated center. Its limbs twitched, slackened. Raphael, eager for payback, kicked free from its grasp, used a tentacle to piston himself upwards, and drove a sai straight into the middle of the slipping meteorite shard, essentially staking it to the beast's skull.

It was enough; the gem gave one last desperate flash, momentarily blinding them, and the beast's wailing degenerated into death-screams, unearthly and high-decibel.

The screams came to an abrupt end when Leonardo descended upon it, swords flashing, and separated its head from its body.

The massive red light upon its brow promptly extinguished, like a lantern being snuffed out, and the beast dissolved into dark mist. Raphael's sai, bereft of anything solid to hang on to, clattered noisily to the ground. A few seconds later all the redness had been leeched out of the cave and the air was still once more.

Leonardo watched as the creature's internal fluids turned black on his swords and dissipated. He was sliding his weapons back into their holders when he sensed his brothers' approach. "Insurance," he explained tersely as he read the question on their faces.

They all gazed at the spot where the beast had been. Not a trace of it remained; the only proof of its existence was the pockmarked earth and the trenches of smashed stalagmites.

Michelangelo was, predictably enough, the first to shatter the silence. He lifted his nunchukus into the air, pumped his arms, and whooped, like an athlete who'd completed a power play. "Let that be a lesson to you—never mess with the teenage mutant ninja turtles!" At his brothers' looks, he amended: "Or…the teenage naked ninja humans!"

He skipped forward, easily evading Raphael's avenging hand.

"To tell ya the truth, that was kinda disappointing," the redheaded youth said. He almost anchored his sais on his belt before remembering that his belt was no longer resting securely on his waist. "Last I remember, the thing was bigger than a house, right? What, it not takin' its vitamins now?"

"Maybe other one was the original monster and we did kill it," Leonardo speculated. "It fed on people's greed for centuries. This one might've only had a couple of months."

Donatello frowned thoughtfully. "So…it's dead, right?"

Raphael lifted a dark red eyebrow. "Uh, were you or were you not here for the past several minutes? We stabbed and beheaded the damn thing. '_Course _it's dead."

"We even saw its light go out," chimed in Mikey. "If that isn't a metaphor for dying, I don't know what is."

Donatello's frown deepened as he continued to stare down into the pit.

"Oh, fer cryin' out loud, Donnie, what _is _it?" Raphael demanded. He didn't like it when Donnie got all quiet and frowny like this. None of them did—it usually preceded bad news.

"If this was a mind trap like the last time, we should've woken up to the real world by now." Donatello scanned his brothers' countenances, foreign yet familiar: Raphael looked irked, Michelangelo looked baffled, and Leonardo looked wary. "If not, whatever that thing did to us should've ended the second we destroyed it." He lifted his hand, five fingers and all, and displayed it to his brothers as testimony. "So why haven't we reverted back to turtles?"

* * *

End of Chapter One

* * *

Closing Notes: I lied. This premise was inspired by a picture I made that was inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here." In the ep, only Mikey ended up turning human—unfortunately, his human form was a cartoony Irma type, not the "realistic" (attractive) Shredder-type. It was rather disappointing—I totally expected him to look cute as a human. Years after I saw that episode, I thought about drawing my own take on the turtle-turned-human idea. For some reason I drew them emerging from the pods from the "Darkness Within" episode, and it was only after I finished coloring the picture that I came up with a back story for it. Then suddenly I was typing it down and I had a chapter done in record time, which is weird because I'm really, really slow when it comes to writing.

Incidentally, it is "Volperhart", "Voplehart", or "Volpahart"? I can't tell, even with the volume cranked way up. This is my first TMNT fic and I really want to get my facts right, so let me know.

_**Next:**__ April to the Rescue, or Desperately Seeking Clothing._


	2. Desperately Seeking Clothing

Author's Notes: I can't believe that years after I've gotten over my childhood TMNT obsession, I'd end up writing fic about the new series. All characters, places, and scenarios within belong to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Mirage Studios.

Inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here" from the original cartoon. If you know what happens in this ep, then you know what happens here. This takes place after the "Ninja Tribunal" storyline (what I've seen of it, anyway).

* * *

Beasts and Men  
Chapter Two: Desperately Seeking Clothing  
by Skyle

* * *

"_Ow_," Mikey whined for about the ninetieth time in three minutes. "Can we take a break? My feet're killing me!"

Ordinarily this would've merited a smack from Raphael (or, at this rate, even Leonardo or Donatello), but for once they could commiserate with him: how were they to know that hiking barefoot through subterranean tunnels as humans would be so excruciating?

"I never thought I'd say this, but I gotta agree with Mikey here," Raphael piped up, discreetly rubbing his ankle. "Who knew human feet were so damn wimpy?"

"It's not surprising," Donatello said in what the others liked to refer to as his 'professor' tone. "Even though it's thickest at the soles of the feet, human epidermis is nonetheless a lot thinner and more sensitive than turtle skin."

"Huh. That explains why I feel like I've been put in a washing machine and run through the spin cycle twice," Mikey groused. "I think my bruises've got bruises. Anybody else feel like they need a bath in the worst way?"

"I do," Leo replied from the front of their little procession. "I don't think I've ever felt so filthy in my entire life. And this's from someone who grew up in a sewer."

Donnie nodded sagely. "Like I said, increased sensitivity."

"Well, being sensitive _bites_," opined Michelangelo. "I can feel the slime from the pod drying starting to dry on me! Actually, it's starting to feel like snot. You know, like when it gets all crusty and stuff."

"Thanks for the image, Mikey," grumbled Leo as he peeled off congealed strips of pod goo from his arms and neck. He hadn't been kidding about feeling absolutely filthy; despite being the most hygienic of the four, he had never had a problem with the sewer environment that was his home. But right now he couldn't repress a wave of disgust whenever his bare human foot squelched against something unmentionable. No wonder humans wore shoes if this was how thin-skinned their feet were.

"Hey, how long d'you think we were out?" Michelangelo wanted to know. "I mean, do you think Master Splinter's out there right now looking for us?"

Leonardo briefly halted to remove a piece of loose sheeting that was blocking his and his brothers' path. "I don't think we've even been gone long enough for him to worry. I don't know for sure how long we were in those pods, but it doesn't feel like much time's passed since we were out on the sewer sliders. I wouldn't be surprised if it's only been a couple of hours."

"That on Central Leo Time?" mumbled Raphael. Leonardo's internal clock had rarely steered him wrong, having been honed by more than a decade's worth of early morning training and late night runs. It was part of the reason none of them bothered to wear watches.

"Why don't we just phone Splinter on the Shell Cell?" persisted Michelangelo. "I mean, I'd do it, but I stored mine in my shell, and since it's gone, I guess I must've dropped it or something…"

"Where do you think the rest of us stored our Cells?" Leo asked him wryly.

"It don't matter," said Raphael. "It ain't like Splinter's gonna find us. Not if he's trackin' turtles."

Donatello stopped so suddenly that Raphael and Michelangelo nearly barreled right into him.

"Hey, Don, do you _mind_? I'd rather not touch any part of your backside, thank you very much," griped Mikey.

"Ya think that's bad?" Raph growled. "If I'd touched _your _backside, I'd have to have my hand burned off!"

Donatello ignored their bickering, eyes wide as he voiced his theory. "Do you think this entire thing might be a body switching experiment, and that our real bodies might be out there somewhere?"

His brothers traded glances, intrigued.

"Like where?" Raphael wanted to know.

Donnie shrugged helplessly. "I don't know! Maybe back in that cavern?"

"There weren't any glowing cells aside from the ones I found you guys in," said Leonardo. "Believe me, I looked."

"What if they weren't glowing?" Mikey suggested.

"The cells that weren't glowing had people in it who were dead," Leo reminded him quietly.

The others sobered at this. Donatello broke the lull with a new question. "What reason could that alien being have for turning us human?"

"Maybe he wanted to soften us up," Raphael offered. "Maybe it wanted us weak and soft and without our shells so he could get ridda us easier!"

Leonardo shook his head admonishingly at his redheaded brother. "Master Yoshi was human. So is the Ancient One. Being human doesn't automatically make one weaker."

Raphael shot Leonardo a look, eyes at half-mast. "The body I got begs to differ, Leo."

"We're just not used to human physiology, that's all," Leo said, even as he silently agreed with part of Raphael's assessment. As humans, their physical attributes were no match for their original mutated forms, and Leo had no idea if this was something that could be rectified.

"Be that as it may," Donnie spoke up, "it still seems like an awful lot of trouble for that thing to go through to get to us. This kind of genetic mucking around is more Stockman's style."

"Or Bishop's," said Raphael, practically biting out the name.

"Why would Bishop turn us human?" Mikey wondered.

" 'Cause he's a freakin' nutso whack bag and he wasn't satisfied with just turnin' Don here into a Gamera wannabe!" growled his redheaded brother. "Maybe he was bored one day and decided to mess with our lives again just 'cause he could!"

Leonardo peeled his weapon strap away from his bare chest, frowning as remnant pod substance dangled between them like sticky saliva. "Look, we'll figure out who or what was really behind this later. Let's just get out of here first."

"Yeah, it _is _kind of damp in here," Donatello admitted, then paused. "I can't believe that after sixteen years of being a turtle, I'm complaining about that."

"Well, the sooner we get back to being reptilian, the better," Raphael declared as the four of them resumed their journey through the bowels of the city. "I'm achin', I got blisters, I can't use my sais right, and I got grime in places I never knew about. Let's just say I ain't looking forward to finding out just how much more uncomfortable and delicate this body can be."

Donatello nearly made a remark about how over-dramatic he was being, but held his tongue—he wasn't known as the resident brain for nothing. But Raph did have a point about the discomfort: there was a reason man created clothing. At the moment all he and his brothers had on them were their weapons, elbow pads, kneepads, makeshift belts (which sagged down low across their upper thighs, bereft of a shell to keep them waist high), and respective bandannas. Donatello's hung from his neck, Raphael and Michelangelo wore theirs around their foreheads, and Leonardo had his properly retied over his eyes. Donnie had to smile at the fastidiousness of his blue-wearing brother as he watched the latter's bandanna flickering in and out of the semi-darkness of the tunnels.

"So…where're we heading, Leo?" he asked.

"To April's place," the black-haired teen answered.

Donatello stopped in his tracks again, causing a second near-pileup with Raphael and Michelangelo.

"_Hey_!" squeaked Mikey. "What did I just say about the sudden stops?"

"That's it, Don!" Raph exploded. "I demand to trade places before I end up sticking a sai into Mikey's fat butt!"

Michelangelo glared. "Who're you callin' fat, Mr. My-Thigh-is-the-Same-Width-as-My-Waist?"

The purple-wearing youth barely heard them; he was too busy staring in dismay at their team leader. "_What_? Why April's place?"

Leonardo stopped walking and returned his stare quizzically. He looked strange with the familiar opaque white eyes of his headband partially obscured by locks of dark hair. "Because it's the closest safe spot from here."

"But—but we can't!" stammered Donnie, his face going through an interesting range of hues. "I...I mean, _look _at us! Tell me we're not gonna barge in on her without…without proper attire!"

"Why, Don, since when do you care 'bout bein' naked in front'a April?" Raphael taunted, forgetting his earlier ire, as Michelangelo snickered. "It's not like you minded before."

Donatello's complexion looked perilously close to matching his headband color, so Leo intervened. "Of course we're not gonna barge in on her naked, Don. We'll find some clothes first…somewhere."

"I'm all for that," said Michelangelo cheerily. "Not that I wouldn't do anything for you guys, but all this nekkid fighting and hanging out in the buff's just a bit too much brotherly bonding, even for me."

"Plus it's drafty," Leo muttered. He hadn't really had time to be self-conscious about his nudity, not when he'd been distracted by other, more pressing matters (such as aiding his newly-minted human brothers against resurrected bloodthirsty thousand-year-old alien evils). If it weren't for the fact that his skin seemed twice as vulnerable to temperature changes and there was no longer a plastron to keep his privates, well, _private_, he probably wouldn't have given clothes a second thought. Then again, he and his brothers had been skulking around in semi-darkness since waking up in the pods, and had mostly been spared the awkwardness of constantly seeing _everything_.

They slogged on for another half-hour. Several stairs and ladders (wherein each brother was infinitely careful not to look up if there was another brother ascending before him) later, the passageways grew less dark and the sounds of street traffic became audible. Finally Leo found the sewer opening to Vine Street—home to an apartment multiplex a few blocks from _2nd Time Around_.

Leonardo pushed the lid up an inch. The alleyway was dark, and the faint chatter of tenants and pedestrians drifted in from the surrounding buildings and sidewalks. Out on the nearby street was a fair amount of passing traffic. Leo guessed that it was early evening, confirming his earlier estimate.

"Yo, Leo, we clear or what?"

He looked back down at where his brothers had gathered at the bottom of the ladder. All three were holding their palms over their brows like blinders to safeguard themselves against any accidental sightings of their brother's rear. Leonardo rolled his eyes.

"We're clear. Let's go."

They cautiously filed out of the manhole—making sure not to remove those makeshift blinders—and retreated to the alleyway's overhanging shadows. The night air, though not exactly cold, was crisp nonetheless, and raised goose bumps all over their unclothed forms. No one brought up the option of taking their usual rooftop route to the antique store, mainly because no one felt like leaping naked from building to building in their awkward new bodies.

"So…" Raphael leaned forward conspiratorially, chunks of red hair falling forward and veiling his eyes. "Do we streak to April's place, or what?"

"_No_!" Donatello yelled, his voice hitting a register usually only Mikey was capable of.

"Four naked guys running the streets? You know, we could pull that off." Michelangelo scrunched up his face in thought as he turned to Leo for affirmation. "I mean, dude, it _is _New York."

Leonardo smiled, even teeth luminous in the gloom. "Let's just keep the streaking option as a last resort, all right?"

"Right." Michelangelo took a moment to size up their hiding place, his floppy mane shining platinum in the scant moonlight. "As long as we figure out something soon. I gotta tell you, Leo, this alleyway really isn't the most sanitary place to stand around naked in."

Donatello eyed him dubiously. "You know a place has really gotta be filthy if Mikey here starts calling it 'unsanitary'."

"It's no filthier than any other alley we've been in," said Leonardo. "Or your room, for that matter."

"_Hey_!" Mikey schooled his features into a hurt expression as his other two siblings made "oooh"ing noises. It was rare to have Leo make a crack about any of his brothers, even in fun, and when he did it was because he was feeling either really playful, frustrated, or exhausted—or because his brain was being monopolized by other, more important things.

Leonardo rubbed the swatch of skin between his brows. "Sorry, Mikey," he apologized. "I'm trying to think of a way for us to get some clothes before we move on."

"I did suggest—reluctantly, mind you—that we borrow the clothes in some of those old pods," Donatello reminded him.

"Oh, yeah, 'cause it's no problem at all taking clothes off of dead people," Mikey countered. "Besides being like a hundred years behind in fashion, it'd be creepy and wrong. I'd rather be naked."

"Well, _I'm _the one who's gonna suffer for that." Raphael pointed a sai skywards. "What about those?"

They all raised their eyes. It appeared that the tenants were used to drying their attire the old-fashioned way; they had made liberal use of the clotheslines stringing across the two adjacent buildings.

"All right!" cheered Mikey. "I call dibs on that awesome-looking jacket!" He started forward as though to scale the apartment wall when Leonardo seized his bandanna tails.

"We are not going to steal some poor family's laundry!" he said firmly.

"But we need it more than they do!" protested Mikey, nodding his head against the grip Leo had on him.

"How would you know? I'm not letting you guys turn into thieves!"

"It won't be stealing, Leo. We're just gonna borrow them," Donnie told him reassuringly. "As soon as we get to April's place, we'll…we'll get them re-washed," he suggested, choosing to ignore Raphael's snort, "and hang them back up here like they were never gone in the first place."

Leonardo pressed his lips together, almost but not completely swayed by the idea. Before he could come to a decision, however, he jerked his head to one side, blue bandanna snapping.

"Someone's coming," he hissed. "Disappear."

The quartet melted into the shade, just in time to avoid being seen by the man who lumbered into the alleyway—as well as the terrified, middle-aged lady he held hostage with his beefy arm.

* * *

Damon Long had been a Purple Dragon only recently, but he knew that something big had gone down lately with the organization. There had been a steep drop in their number over the past few months, leading to a recruitment drive (which had allowed Damon to join in the first place), and that their leader Hun (leader for the moment, anyway—rumor had it Dragon-Face was starting to jockey for his position again) was getting ambitious. He was starting to preach stuff about elevating the Purple Dragons to more high-profile crimes, like theft of military armaments and museum artifacts. No more dime-store hold-ups and mugging old ladies for them.

Still, you didn't just discard the classics.

He tightened his hold around his latest victim, making sure that she could still breathe while smothering the whimpering sounds she was making behind his large hand. In his grasp she felt as fragile and shaky as a baby bird, making Damon smile. She'd since stopped trying to beat off his arm with her purse—a tan Louis Vuitton number that Damon had once seen in his mom's _InStyle _magazine with the sale price of $600.

"Okay, lady, just give me your bag and there won't be any problems."

She obliged, and Damon heard the thump of the purse hitting the ground, right next to a crumpled McDonald's paper sack. He could feel her close to hyperventilating now, and he tried to recall how she'd looked like before he'd snatched her—he was pretty sure she'd been just a bit younger than his own mother.

"Actually, I changed my mind. There _is _something else you can give me—"

The lady squealed in alarm, reading his mind, and began to thrash about with all the ferocity of a butterfly in a net. Damon began to laugh, and probably would've gone on laughing, if his ears hadn't picked up snatches of a conversation going on behind…the nearby trash bin?

"…Purple Dragon, Leo. That's gotta be a sign."

"Hold on, Raph. Don't go rushing—"

Thoroughly creeped out, Damon whirled around, his prey forgotten. He fished out his pocketknife (a Purple Dragon initiation gift) and got ready to unleash his frustrations on the weirdos who got their kicks hiding behind garbage bins and spying on other people's business—

He didn't even have time to spring the blade when something clocked him across the face—hard enough to click his teeth together—and sent him into dreamland.

* * *

Raphael pulled back his fist and checked his knuckles. The satisfaction on his face faded a bit as he registered the fact that they were throbbing a little. That hadn't even been his best punch.

Someone squeaked near him, and he realized that the lady was still standing there. She seemed frightened more by his appearance than by the fact that he had just taken out her attacker. Which was par for the course, really.

"Here ya go, lady. Live long and prosper an' all that." He handed her the dropped purse and waited for her to scream.

She blinked, took her purse from him, and didn't scream. Instead she stepped back, appraised him from head to toe, then back up again, blinking the entire time with her mouth agape. Raphael was starting to wonder about her state of mind when she managed a very high, "Thank you," and walked backwards a couple of feet before finally shuffling off.

The others waited until she was well and truly gone before emerging from their hiding places. Raphael turned to smirk at them.

"Ya hear that?" he gloated. "I got a 'thank you'. I'd say that's a big improvement over the usual screaming, wouldn't you?"

"Uh…maybe that's because you're a naked guy who jumped out from behind some trash heap to rescue her?" Mikey suggested.

Raphael looked down at himself. Shell, he couldn't believe he'd almost forgotten he wasn't reptilian anymore. No wonder he'd had the distinct sensation of being ogled; he wondered if he should be more embarrassed or something. "Yeah, whatever." He ambled over toward the unconscious gang member. "But looky here, boys. I got myself some threads."

Leonardo stalked toward him, yanking his headband down to reveal stormy eyes. "I told you to wait, Raph!"

"Oh, well, forgive me then f'my disobedience, Master Leo," the redhead said sarcastically even as he proceeded to unbutton the punk's jeans. It was spattered with paint and condiment and God knew what else, but it wasn't as though he could afford to be picky. "What's the big deal, anyway? All the bum had was a pocketknife."

"This bum isn't alone," snapped his brother.

Immediately after he finished his sentence, the alleyway echoed with the footsteps of two approaching Purple Dragons.

" 'Ey, Damon, man, what's the—"

The two punks stopped cold at the scene that greeted them: four nude teenage males clustered in a dingy alleyway—and the one with the red hair, for some reason or the other, seemed to be pulling off their unconscious comrade's pants.

"What the f…" One of the Dragons fumbled in his pockets and withdrew a gun.

Leonardo caught his gun hand with his own right and—almost as an afterthought—gave his wrist a painful twist, forcing the thug to drop the weapon. With his left he delivered an efficient hand chop to the base of the latter's neck.

The second Dragon shook himself out of his shock and managed to get to his own knife, only to have it poked out of his hand by Donatello's staff. He didn't even bother to dodge the follow-up blow to his head.

All in all, the entire thing took three seconds.

The four boys took a moment to contemplate their handiwork before Mikey began to celebrate their turn of fortune.

"All right! Now we got clothes!" He reached eagerly for the nearest Dragon's jacket—the one Raphael had knocked out—and found himself blocked by his redheaded brother. "Hey!"

"Hands off, goofball, I got dibs on this one!" Raphael tugged on the jeans he'd just appropriated, all the while grimacing at the unappetizing sight of the grayish-white underwear the thug had on underneath.

"Fine, be a clothes-hog. That Purple Dragon of yours looks like he never changes his underwear, anyway," sniffed the light-haired teen. He shifted his attention toward the two other Dragons, only to see that Leonardo and Donatello had already laid claim to their garments.

"Oh, so it's okay for us to steal Purple Dragons' clothes but not those of apartment tenants?" Donnie teased his blue-bandannaed brother as he slipped on a shirt complete with ripped sleeves.

"I figure it's karma. What we're taking from them's nothing compared to what they were going to take from that lady," Leonardo replied grimly, stepping into a pair of camouflage-style pants.

Mikey stomped to the center of their little circle. "Wait a sec! We only got three Purple Dragons here! What about me? What am _I _supposed to wear?"

The other three exchanged glances.

"We could donate," Leo said to Raphael and Donatello. "Whatever we can spare."

Raphael immediately proffered a pair of greenish, thread-worn socks.

"What, no good?" he said in response to the looks his brothers shot him.

Donatello, willing to provide a better example, proffered a cap and a long-sleeved shirt (he already had an inner shirt and a purple-tailed trench coat—apparently, his Purple Dragon believed in layers). Leonardo contributed an army jacket and boots (he could survive three blocks in a pair of thick woolly socks). Raphael grudgingly gave up his Purple Dragon's gloves. ("_What_? I already gave him the socks offa my feet! Whaddaya want from me?")

Mikey was grateful for his brothers' donations—at least until he put them on and realized that his ensemble was missing something essential.

"Uh, guys…I don't have any pants."

Raphael made a show of slapping his forehead. "Really? Aw, Mikey, that's just too bad." Then, with a shrug, he dusted off his new clothes and made as though to depart. "Oh, well, them's the breaks. Let's go, guys."

Leonardo stepped in before Michelangelo could panic any further. "No one's leaving this alleyway until Michelangelo gets some pants."

"Well, he ain't gettin' mine," declared Raph, hitching up his grubby pants with disturbing possessiveness. "We earned ours fair and square. It ain't our fault Mikey here was too lazy to bag himself a Purple Dragon."

"And if he goes out there like this he'll get arrested for public indecency," Leonardo argued as Mikey embarrassedly pulled down his shirt and jacket as low as they could go.

Raphael glanced down and prodded the first Purple Dragon's slack form with his newly pilfered shoe. "Well," he said slowly, "they still got their skivvies."

Michelangelo's jaw dropped, his eyes goggling in acute horror.

"I mean, why the shell not?" Raphael went on, enjoying this far too much. "This guy's like three hundred pounds easy, and from the look of it, his boxers'd fit ya like a pair of shorts…"

"Maybe we could use a shirt and wrap it around his waist like a kilt?" Donnie suggested, taking pity on his orange-banded brother.

Mikey's expression did a complete turnaround as he beamed at the brown-haired teen. "Donnie, did anyone ever tell you you're a genius?"

Raphael glowered at Donatello, not at all happy at being deprived of the fun of forcing Mikey into a pair of vile undergarments. "Uh, one problem, brainiac. We ain't got no more shirts. It's a miracle we managed t'scrape enough for the four of us."

Leonardo provided the solution by stripping off his shirt and tossing it to a grinning Mikey. "Here. But I get your jacket."

"Deal!" Mikey secured the shirt around his middle—thankfully, it was long enough to cover his knees—before handing Leonardo the jacket.

The black-haired youth pulled the jacket on and over his katana holders; fortunately the collar was wide enough to accommodate this, though it prevented him from being able to zip it up and completely cover his exposed chest. Providing that no one looked too close, it would be easy to miss the fact that he was bare-chested underneath his jacket, or that he had only socks on his feet.

"You guys ready?"

Everyone nodded. Leonardo had to pause to take in the surrealism of his turtle-turned-human brothers sloppily dressed in gang outfits emblazoned with Purple Dragon insignias.

"What about them?" Donnie queried, nodding at the half-naked thugs at their feet.

"Leave it to me." Michelangelo was already peeking around the alley corner, and had spotted a police car parked conveniently across the street. "I got an idea."

* * *

April O'Neil loved Fridays.

Particularly this Friday—it was the first in a long while that she had actually had a significant amount of time to herself. She had a new bottle of vanilla-scented bubble bath and some aromatherapy candles, her favorite towel and bathrobe (made impossibly velvety by her mother's faithful use of Downy softener), and a book she'd bought months ago but had never had the time to actually read.

Not that she hadn't tried: the week she'd bought it she'd had to aid the turtles in breaking into Oroku Saki's building to prevent him from rocketing into space, and the week after that she'd been out in the boonies helping them recover from their injuries, and the week after that she'd had to contend with Casey's relapsing into his vigilante habits and his wild stories about a homeless man he and the turtles had run into who had tried to get rats to eat them…

But she was digressing. It was true that ever since that fateful day she'd come across four mutant turtles and their rat sensei, the excitement meter of her life had a tendency to skyrocket every two weeks. Sometimes it was a good kind of excitement, like traveling to a different dimension to be reunited with her long-lost Uncle Augie, and sometimes it was a bad kind of excitement, like almost losing her life along with her home. It was like the turtles were in the possession of some innate chaos magnet, to the point where she doubted she could take them to any place where they would not be ambushed by murderous skilled ninjas, vengeful time travelers, warring aliens, or deadly inter-dimensional assassins. In fact, she had the alarming suspicion that all the madness she had personally witnessed in their company was only a fraction of the madness that they actually underwent on a daily basis.

April loved the turtles like her own family, she really did, but the thought of being exposed 24/7 to their adrenaline-drenched lifestyle made her quite ill.

She was only human, after all.

Still, things seemed to have quieted down somewhat. The turtles had recently vanquished the demon-Shredder and struck yet another quasi-truce with Karai; internal strife continued to keep the Purple Dragons busy and so far Oroku Saki was still floating about in the cosmos.

A pessimist would say that this was all just the calm before the storm. Good thing April preferred to see the glass half-full.

She was just about to lower herself into the bubble-filled tub when the doorbell rang.

_Figures, _April thought resignedly. She slipped on her bathrobe and wondered who could be dropping in on her so early in the evening. Casey was out of town visiting his mom and would not be back until much later, her sister was across the country with Uncle Augie, and she didn't know any acquaintance she was close enough to who would disturb her at this time. Which left the turtles.

Surely this wasn't a life-or-death situation, she thought, or they would've contacted her first via Shell Cell. Maybe they were feeling a little claustrophobic down in the sewers and just wanted to hang out, as they were wont to do from time to time. In any case, April wasn't about to begrudge them; it wasn't like she _had _to soak in the bath until she was pruney, and anyway she had a tech-related question she wanted to ask Don.

"Hold on, guys, I'm coming," she called as the doorbell sounded a second time. But when she swung open the door, it wasn't to the four stocky forms she'd been anticipating. Instead she found herself confronted by four young men she'd never seen before. And, she realized with a touch of anxiety, they were dressed in outfits emblazoned with the Purple Dragon motif.

"May I help you?" she said evenly. If they were here to cause trouble she was fairly sure she could handle them. She'd had a pretty good ninjitsu teacher.

"April," the one in front began earnestly, "it's us."

_How did he know my name? _April wondered even as she re-evaluated her visitors. At second glance she realized that they were younger than she'd first thought—teenagers, really—and they didn't really look like the average Purple Dragon thug: no gaudy tattoos, not even a single body piercing. In fact, they were actually kind of decent-looking—at least, judging from what she could see under the liberal coating of dirt and some unidentifiable semi-transparent gooey substance that resembled strawberry jam. What had these Dragons been prowling around in?

"I'm sorry. I don't think I've ever met any of you in my entire life," she said weakly, even as the metaphorical light bulb over her head began to flicker on and off.

"That's right, you've never met us," drawled the redhead at the back, Brooklyn accent roughening his words. "Not like this, anyway."

April opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out.

"Oh, man," gulped the blond. April only vaguely registered the fact that he didn't seem to be wearing pants, just a long-sleeved shirt knotted around his hips. "I hope she's not gonna faint again like she did that first time."

"Mikey!" The brown-haired teen to the right elbowed him before turning to April, his cheeks faintly red. "Hey, April," he greeted with a little wave of his hand.

"We can explain," volunteered the black-haired boy in front as he fiddled with the leather strap across his bare chest.

April lifted a hand to her forehead as though to check for a fever. The boys started forward anxiously, ready to catch her should she topple over, but she remained upright. Finally she lowered her hand and peered at the quartet with disbelieving eyes.

"Guys?" she whispered.

* * *

End of Chapter Two

* * *

Closing Notes: First off, thanks to everyone who reviewed and helped me with the "Volpehart" spelling! As a newcomer to TMNT fic, it's great to know that people are giving this tale a chance. I didn't know there were other 'turtles-turn-human' fics; I thought the subject was relegated mostly to art pieces—of which I've seen a good number of on DeviantArt, though the boys almost always look indistinguishable from each other (I guess that means I need to really pore through this section when I have the time). I initially intended my first TMNT fic to be a Splinter/fatherhood piece, but it was taking too long to write and as I worked on my pic I realized that I could get a great character study out of this sort of premise (i.e., would Raphael be as angry if he was no longer bound to the "outcast" mindset? What would Donatello be capable of if he were given every opportunity someone of his intellect would be entitled to? If faced with the chance to live his life for himself, would Leonardo take it?). You know, that kind of thing.

I'm actually pretty psyched at where the story goes; I've got some scenarios planned out, particularly for Leo and Donnie. Things will get more dramatic and angsty later on (boy, will they ever), but I don't intend to lighten up the humor or the action. I have practically every episode so I'm comfortable enough with the characterizations, but let me know if they start getting too OOC.

Oh, and if anybody wants to see the almost-finished pic I drew before I wrote this thing, the URLs are on my bio page (darn formatting rules!). Contrary to the image titles, there's no real nudity, just some bare-chested-ness. My sister managed to tell the boys apart right off the bat, so I'm interested to see if anyone else do the same—I removed the bandannas and weapons just to make it a bit harder. Anyone who gets them right gets a (virtual) cookie!

_**Next:** Donatello and Leonardo discover different things, Splinter meets his new sons, and the boys get a lead on who's responsible for their newest dilemma. _


	3. Auguries

Author's Notes: I can't believe that years after I've gotten over my childhood TMNT obsession, I'd end up writing fic about the new series. All characters, places, and scenarios within belong to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Mirage Studios.

Inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here" from the original cartoon. If you know what happens in this ep, then you know what happens here. This takes place after the "Ninja Tribunal" storyline (what I've seen of it, anyway).

* * *

Beasts and Men  
Chapter Three: Auguries  
by Skyle

_We are fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.  
_—old Japanese proverb

* * *

"It's biologically impossible."

"That's what I said."

"You can't just convert turtle DNA into human DNA!"

"I said that, too."

"It's biologically _impossible_."

The brown-haired teen on the other side of the sofa twiddled his thumbs, looking lost. "Um, yeah."

April took a hold of herself and exhaled. Once upon a time she had encountered four humanoid turtles and a four-foot-tall talking rat under the labyrinthine tunnels of New York while fleeing for her life from a horde of murderous mouse-hunting robots. This by comparison should be a cakewalk. "Okay. Okay." She opened her eyes and did a thorough scrutiny of the four teenagers in her living room.

It was strange: despite the fact that they were total strangers to her—at least physically—she thought that she could actually tell them apart even if they hadn't bothered to re-introduce themselves or had discarded their headbands.

It was Raphael who caught April's eyes first, mostly because his human form looked like he could pass for Casey's younger, every-bit-as-tough brother—only with April's coloring (a preview of a Jones-O'Neill genetic merger? April wondered, before blushingly shoving it out of her mind). He had similar emphatically masculine features and a muscular frame, though his brick-red hair was only an inch past his nape and hung roguishly in his eyes instead of framing them like Casey's, and there was a dark edge to his smirk that Casey could no longer match. His eyes were a hue of green so deep they were almost black, and he was proudly sporting what appeared to be the beginnings of stubble on his chin.

The teenager who seemed incapable of standing still had bright hazel eyes and shaggy strawberry-blond hair arranged into a bowlcut with long bangs parted in the middle—a style that might have seemed unfitting for anyone who wasn't Michelangelo. Not surprisingly, his human face was open and amiable, and good-looking enough to inspire confidences from anyone at the receiving end of his perpetual grin. He bore the physique and movements of a natural athlete, and, if the way he was bouncing back and forth across the room was any indication, appeared to have adapted to his human form faster than any of his brothers.

The boy standing across from them with his arms folded had to be Leonardo: his eyes were the exact same shade as the headband hanging around his neck, and there was no mistaking the intensity of his aura and the serious set of his mouth. His thick jet-black hair fell flatteringly at an angle across his forehead, and he had the triangular upper torso and narrow waist of someone in prime physical condition. He looked not unlike the archetypical male lead from one of those teen dramas on TV (a fact April suspected he would be happier not knowing).

Sitting on the sofa next to her was undoubtedly Donatello, wearing that shy half-smile that April was convinced was specific to the turtle with the purple bandanna. He was slender but wiry, with brown, slightly spiky hair that was neatly brushed away from his face except for a few disobedient locks that dangled defiantly across his brow. Compared to Michelangelo and Raphael, whose overall appearances and demeanors were natural attention magnets, or Leonardo, who was striking enough to stick out no matter how quiet he got, Donatello's human form was relatively modest and unassuming, save for his eyes—piercing, intelligent, and infused with an exotic, decidedly violet tint.

At the moment he seemed to be speaking to her. April saw his mouth move, and quickly tuned back in.

"April? You okay?" he was asking.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just…" April cracked a faint smile and indicated them with a sweep of her arm. "I mean…you guys. _Wow_."

The blond-haired teen—Mikey—aimed a grin at his brothers. "Hear that? Sounds like someone's in awe of our devastating good looks." He winked playfully at April. "Of course, _I'm _still the prettiest one, right?"

"Nope, you're still the dumbest-looking one," shot back Raphael, planting a hand on the blond's ear and shoving. Mikey shoved back, causing the redhead to bump into Leonardo, who was promptly jolted out of his thinking trance.

"Would you knock it off?" he growled at the other two.

Raphael responded by nudging the raven-haired boy's shoulder hard with his own. "Ooh, whassa matter? Afraid we're gonna mess up your hair?"

"Yeah, Leo." Mikey appeared at Leo's other shoulder, ruffling his brother's mane. "Just 'cause you're the second prettiest doesn't mean you're too good to rough house with us now."

"We're not gonna rough house in April's apartment!" Leo exclaimed, wriggling out from where he'd been trapped between his two chortling siblings. "Can't we visit her place, just _once_, without something breaking?"

April observed their interaction with blatant fascination. Suddenly it was much easier to believe that these unfamiliar human teenagers were the young turtles she had practically adopted as her little brothers. "You know, it's kind of comforting to realize that some things never change."

"Yeah," Donatello said beside her, still twiddling his fingers. April caught his eye and he gave her that Donatelloesque half-smile again.

Human eyes aren't naturally that shade of purple, April thought before blurting out, "So what happened to you guys?"

The four of them traded glances and Leonardo cleared his throat. "Remember when we told you about that time we went to rescue Angel's brother at the Volpehart Building?"

"Yeah…"

"That's where we woke up and found ourselves like this," Mikey piped up. "With five fingers and hair in unmentionable places and everything!"

"And you don't know who was responsible?" asked April.

"Well, the alien being that we fought before was there," Donatello said, "but it was smaller—assuming it was even the same alien being. But we managed to defeat it again."

"And yet we're _still _stuck like this," finished Raphael, poking one side of his chiseled cheek for emphasis.

"We weren't even in those pods long," Leo continued, starting to pace the carpet. "The last thing we remember is riding on our hover boards in the tunnels near the lair. That was around one o' clock."

"Incidentally, April, what day is it?" Donnie wanted to know.

"It's Friday. The 11th."

"Same day," Raphael muttered. "We musta been out only 'bout six hours, tops."

"Which isn't even close to being enough time for any kind of gradual transfiguration process, much less something as complex as mutant-to-human transfiguration," said Donatello, beginning to think out loud. "I mean, Bishop and Stockman might—and I emphasize _might_—be able to pull it off, but not in the span of a couple of hours. Maybe for human mutations, but not the other way around—too much risk of a cellular breakdown. Maybe brainwave transference—"

"_English_, Don," Michelangelo and Raphael chorused in well-practiced unison.

"Like the way Stockman was able to keep himself alive," their brother went on without missing a beat. "His consciousness was transferred from one body to another. With the level of technology I've seen at Bishop's place, it's not far-fetched to assume that they could undergo this mind transfer process within an hour, if not minutes."

"Even so," Leo said pensively, "that still doesn't explain why we were in pods under the Volpehart Building with no one but that monster in sight. Can you really see Bishop collaborating with a giant alien entity even if it was to get rid of us?"

"I dunno, bro." Raphael was playing around with one of his sais, trying to balance the point on the pad of his index finger. "I wouldn't put anything past that freak collector Bishop. It's like he got his dirty fingers into everything nowadays."

"What if…what if this's all a hallucination?" Mikey burst out. "What if this's just all in our heads? What if our real bodies're still in those pods and our souls're being sucked dry by that evil tentacled thingy as we speak?"

Everyone stared at him. For a heartbeat it was so quiet they could hear the rustling of discarded paper products on the street outside.

It was broken when Raphael gave Mikey an empathic swat to the back of his skull.

"Ouch!"

Raphael eyed his hand, then did a swift scan of his surroundings. "Well, damn. I was hoping that'd wake one of us up." He squinted at his fuming brother. "So, you awake?"

"What d'you think?" yelled Mikey, rubbing his head while his eyes shot daggers at Raphael.

"Wait…if this's a hallucination, then I've got to be included in it, because this seems pretty real to me," protested April.

"Same here," Leonardo seconded. He leaned against the wall next to April's sofa (being careful to avoid the window—old habits died hard). "The first time I was in that cell, even when I was going through those nightmares, I had this feeling in the back of my mind that told me that it was all wrong, that it wasn't real. Right now I'm not getting that feeling."

"Well, even if this ain't a hallucination, there's still the matter of who did this to us," grunted Raphael.

"You guys know anyone else who'd hate you guys enough to pull something like this?" asked April.

"A few." Mikey began to count off on his fingers. "Not including Stockman and Bishop and the evil alien thingy, there's Drako, and Savanti Romero, and Garbageman, and we really can't leave out the Triceratons—" He stopped suddenly, regarding his hand with delight. "Hey, look! I can actually count to five!"

"Congratulations," murmured Donnie, unable to resist. "It took you what, thirteen years?"

"Good one, Don," Raph sniggered.

"Har-de-har," drawled Michelangelo, sticking out his tongue. "Anyway, there's also that Zanramon guy, and General Blanque, those five elemental guys with the Foot—assuming they're not completely gone—that winged Mithos guy, the Y'Lyntians, that Ultimate Ninja guy—oh, wait, he got turned into a kid, but if he ever got back to normal he'd go after Leo—and that assassin Gojira—but it's Leo he hates—and that guy Lord Hebi who sent him—to kill Leo, actually—and that crazy guy who tried to feed us to the rats until Leo kicked him off a building…gee, Leo, you sure have a lot of people after your hide…"

"Thanks, Mikey, I needed the reminder," muttered his blue-wearing brother.

"You really think any a' of those losers would be capable of doin' _this_?" grumbled Raphael. Hearing his brother recite a laundry list of their foes had seriously dampened his mood, maybe because he was beginning to realize that he and his siblings were at a significant disadvantage at the moment.

"At this point," Leo said grimly, "I wouldn't rule anyone out."

There was another silence as they all mentally reviewed the situation. Exasperated, Donatello exhaled and flopped his tired upper torso down on the sofa backrest. April couldn't rein in a gasp as his soiled hands and hair made contact with the red fabric. At the sound, the brown-haired teen immediately leaped to his feet, his expression contrite.

"S-sorry, April! I forgot that—"

"Oh, Don, don't apologize." She smiled soothingly at him. "There's barely a smear. I'm the one who should apologize, anyway; would you guys like to wash that grime off of yourselves? I've got some spare men's clothes from Uncle Augie and Casey in the blue hamper."

"We wouldn't want to impose…" Leonardo began, as though he and his brothers hadn't once dropped off their sick and about-to-mutate sibling here in the middle of her date with Casey.

Mikey, however, had no such compunctions. "Thanks, April! Last one to the shower hatched from a rotten egg!" With that, he vaulted across the living room and made a beeline for the bath.

Raphael grabbed onto a loose sleeve of his makeshift pants—and let go a half-second later, remembering that he'd had enough of brotherly nudity. But that wasn't about to stop him from tearing after Mikey. There was a series of thumps and grunts throughout the hallway as the two of them wrestled and raced for the first rights to the shower.

April suppressed a sigh as she thought of her bubble bath, scented candles, and abandoned book.

There was a slam of a door, some unrepeatable expletives courtesy of Raphael, and Mikey's yell of triumph. It was followed by something that sounded like, "Oooh! Bubbles!", but April couldn't be entirely sure.

She glanced at the two remaining teenagers and cocked an eyebrow. "The more things change, huh?"

They grinned, and for the first time since their arrival April saw that it really _was _Leonardo and Donatello grinning back at her.

* * *

Some blocks away Officers Duncan and Greene emerged from the nearby coffee shop bearing biscotti and Bear Claws, only to find that their police car was draped with three unconscious tattooed men who, for some reason or the other, were dressed only in their underwear.

Still, they had Purple Dragon tats on across their arms and backs—places that should've been covered up had they been properly clothed—there were pocketknives and a gun secured around the elastic of their undergarments, and they _were _violating police property (as far as Greene was concerned, lolling around half-naked on their vehicle had to fit some sort of definition of "violating"), so they were pronounced under arrest. The Dragons didn't even bother to resist, because they seemed to be suffering the effects of some massive hangover—actually, perhaps they were still in the grip of their intoxication, because as soon as they regained some semblance of coherence they began babbling something about some perverted teenagers attacking them and then making off with their clothes.

"Listen to me, man! There were these naked kids, like, hiding behind the garbage bins, and they, like, did these crazy kung-fu moves on us and knocked us out, and when we woke up we didn't have our clothes no more!"

"Yeah, yeah. Next you're gonna tell us about giant mutant turtles," muttered Officer Duncan as he and Greene wrestled the handcuffed punks into the back seat.

"No, no, man, we ain't high or anything! There's gotta be some whacko nudist cult out there training karate kids and—"

The poor Dragon was cut off as Officer Duncan slammed the door shut on him.

Greene cackled as he reached for his radio. "I don't know what they've been smoking, but…a karate nudist cult?"

Duncan shrugged and glanced at the back seat as the Dragons continued to snivel and squirm uncomfortably next to each other in their skivvies. "You never know. This _is _New York."

* * *

"…from a scientific standpoint, it's extremely fascinating. I actually can't wait to run myself through some tests once I get back to the lair." Donatello, newly scrubbed and clean, beamed as he plucked a brown strand from his slightly damp shirt—a dark blue button-up from Uncle Augie. "To think this hair sample actually contains my DNA! Or…maybe some stranger's human DNA, assuming it was only my consciousness that was transferred and this body was artificially grown. Maybe I could get samples from you guys and compare them to the control ones…"

Both Leonardo and Michelangelo looked apprehensive. Raphael would have as well, but he was presently off commandeering the bathroom (he'd refused to use it after Mikey had finished, stating something about health reasons both physical and mental, so Don had gone next). At the moment all the teens in the living room—save for Leo, who had volunteered to go last—were dirt-free and dressed in Uncle Augie's and Casey's leftover clothes. None of them had bothered to discard their bandannas, which were once again secured around their eyes.

"Are you getting the feeling we're about to become Donnie's favorite lab specimens?" Mikey asked Leo in a sotto voice as Donatello went on chattering happily about the range of tests he couldn't wait to subject them all to.

"I'll let you know once he starts putting us in jars," Leo answered him out of the corner of his mouth.

April couldn't help but grin at Donatello's enthusiasm. That was Donnie—whether they were dealing with mutated killer insects or species switching, he always latched on to the parts that were either scientifically beneficial and/or intellectually stimulating. "Whoa, Donnie, slow down. You'll have plenty of time to conduct those tests."

"That's only if we don't wake up from this dream soon," Mikey interjected from his perch on one of the floor cushions.

Donatello raised a brown eyebrow. "You _still _think this's just a dream we're all sharing?"

"I dunno." Mikey shrugged. "I mean, it feels pretty real to me, but so did that first time in the Volpehart Building, and the time with the elemental Foot guys, and the Tribunal's mind game."

"He's got a point," Leo acquiesced.

Michelangelo crossed his arms and tossed his brown-haired brother a slightly smug glance. "See? Leo thinks I've got a point."

"Still, if this's going on in our heads, what would be the purpose? Every time one of our enemies try one of those mental attacks, we end up living our worst nightmares." Donatello had to pause as his brain was bombarded by the memory of April and Casey's "deaths" via missile. "What's the most horrible thing to happen to us so far?"

Mikey scratched his head. "Uh…the naked fighting? Having to steal clothes from Purple Dragons? Me almost having to wear that nasty underwear?"

"They're nothing compared to what I expected us to go through if this really _is _a hallucination. I mean, is being human supposed to be our worst nightmare?" Donatello caught himself just then and aimed an apologetic smile at the red-haired woman beside him. "No offense, April."

"None taken. To tell you the truth, there are times when I'm not exactly proud to be _homo sapien _myself," she admitted. "But if it means anything, you guys feel real to me." Impulsively, she seized Donatello's hand and squeezed. "See? Pretty real."

Donatello stared at their joined hands, looking like a hundred points had just been knocked off his sizable IQ.

"Look at that." April laughed a little as she splayed her palm flat against his. "One finger for each of mine. Your hands're still bigger, though." She wriggled her fingers against his for emphasis.

There was a shifting on Donatello's face—like the slip of a mask, a flash of sun behind a blanket of clouds—something so quick and subtle that no one should have been able to see it.

Raphael chose this moment to wander into the living room wearing a black wife-beater and dark green sweats, towel dangling from his neck. He cut a very Casey-like silhouette out of the corners of everyone's peripheral vision; both April and Donatello looked up immediately as he entered.

"Yo, April, what's in your soap, anyway?" he demanded, swiping at his still-wet hair with the strange, erratic movements of one completely unused to the habit. "I smell like a freakin' flower garden here."

April's eyes widened as the aroma hit her like a physical slap. "That's my special soap! The gardenia-and-honeysuckle one! I never use it except for very special occasions!"

"Gardenia and honeysuckle?" Raphael cautiously sniffed at his armpits and grimaced as though offended by the floridness of his scent. "This the thing you use whenever you go on a date with Case? You know what, I didn't need ta know that."

April huffed. "You _could _have used the regular soap on the soap tray."

"Didn't see it." Raphael swiped his towel one last time over his hair before snapping it toward Leonardo, who caught it without even looking. "Bathroom's all yours, Leo." He frowned as his brother remained motionless, towel hand still outstretched. "Leo?"

The blue-bandannaed boy blinked. "Right. Thanks." With that, he tossed the towel over his shoulder and departed for the bathroom. He only vaguely heard Michelangelo's wisecrack about Casey possibly mistaking Raphael for April thanks to his new coloring and his new girly smell—as well as the crashing sounds of Raphael's subsequent retribution.

* * *

Donatello had always had a soft spot for her.

They all did, actually, but Donnie's seemed to run deeper than that. April O'Neil could make Donatello—the least confrontational, most pacifistic of them all—pick up a gun and threaten to shoot any who dared lay a hand on her.

Still, whatever the depth of his feelings for her, Don had been so discreet in his display of it that no one really brought it up. Raphael and Mikey would tease him about her now and then, but never with any real conviction. Maybe it was just a crush—perfectly harmless, perfectly normal, and certainly not unusual, especially for their age. At any rate, Don had seemed to have moved past it after it became clear to all how serious she and Casey were getting.

But earlier…that _look_. It was as if a light bulb had just switched on over Don's head. No one else had noticed (Mikey had been too busy reliving the revulsion of the underwear incident, and April was just naturally oblivious to that sort of thing), but Leo had.

Leonardo stared down at the patterns of brown and gray sludge spiraling down into the shower drain. Water battered down over the curve of his skull, the warmth of it coursing like a salve over his throbbing back muscles. The crown of his head rested against the cold tile, his hands braced on either side. He still couldn't get used to seeing those dark locks of wet hair dangling at the edges of his vision, or the paleness of his skin.

He thought about the incident in the living room, and wondered if it was an augury of things to come. He hoped it didn't mean that Don had momentarily forgotten Casey, or was actually considering remaining in his human form a little longer. His brothers were counting on his scientific know-how to help fix this newest problem, and none of them could afford him to be distracted in any way—

Annoyed with himself for even thinking that, Leo shook his head under the spray, droplets raining everywhere. Of _course _Donnie would come through for them. Maybe he was over-analyzing this; he did have that tendency.

He finished his shower quickly and stepped out into the bathroom. Ten minutes ago he had entered to see that everything was just as bad as he had feared: rivulets of dirty water trickling across every possible linoleum and porcelain surface, toiletries scattered across the bottoms of the sink and tub, sopping towels on the floor, grimy Purple Dragon garments strewn everywhere. For a second he'd been tempted to leave the mess for his brothers to clean, but finally resigned himself to the task while inwardly grumbling about his instinctual decision to go last.

Then again, cleaning up the bathroom had allowed him to locate the regular soap, which one of his brothers had concealed under a carelessly discarded shower cap. Unlike Raph, he would be spared from having to smell like he'd fallen into a vat of flower perfume.

He dried himself off, and was buttoning up a leftover pair of Casey's jeans when he saw himself on the slightly fogged-up mirror of the medicine cabinet across. The sight of a dark-haired human stranger mimicking his every action was enough to make him pause.

Leonardo propped his hands on the sink and took his first good look at his human face (while noting in the back of his mind that his shoulders and upper torso now fit in the mirror instead of merely his head and neck like before). Nothing extraordinary about it, he supposed: it had eyes and lips and a nose, all those typical human features. He felt no attachment to it, nor did he think it interesting at all, except for his eyes. The color was different—a shade of blue he had felt an affinity for his entire life, seemingly magnified by the sheer black of his hair—but it was still the same old-man eyes. Old-man eyes in a teenager's face.

He lost interest quickly in his new features and began to turn away, only to freeze. Across his back was a vaguely X-shaped configuration of ugly blue-and-purple bruises—appallingly dark against the translucence of his skin—and there, just below the back of his shoulder where the chipped edge of his shell had been, was a thin pink line.

It was a scar—_his _scar, as straight and clean as the katana that had inflicted it.

Narrowing his eyes, Leo moved his body around so that it was facing front. Slightly south of the end of his collarbone was the matching entry-wound scar.

Even as he leaned in closer to inspect the mark, Donnie's words about the possibility of their bodies having been cloned or switched reverberated through his head. If that really was the case, then how could this new body have retained the disfigurement of his original one? Weren't cloned bodies essentially newborns, free of blemishes or injury marks? If his brainwaves had been switched over from his original body to this new one, how could someone be meticulous enough to pierce this new body in the exact same spot in the exact same angle with the exact same weapon?

Or _was _this his real body?

_Not possible. _

Leonardo shoved himself away from the sink, making a mental note to mention this to Donnie later. He slipped on the last T-shirt from the blue hamper, a snug red top with the words "TIGHTASS" stamped across the front in big block letters. It had been, he remembered with a groan, a joke shirt April had bought for Casey last Christmas in reference to his unwillingness to spend money on any food that he couldn't pronounce (though Casey insisted that this was more an expression of her admiration of a specific body part). He wondered darkly if his brothers had intentionally left it for him to take.

Still, it was clean and laundered and it didn't rasp against his sore skin, a much better alternative to that Purple Dragon's greasy jacket.

He managed to towel his hair as dry as he could (after being momentarily taken aback when his damp bangs tumbled over his eyes, almost completely blotting out his vision; he'd had to suppress the impulse to give them an impromptu trim with one of his katanas), then re-fastened his blue mask over his eyes. Finally he re-strapped his scabbard to his back, picked up his kneepads and elbow pads, and exited the bathroom barefoot.

Out in the living room he found his brothers standing back-to-back-to-back, holding their palms out at horizontal angles, while April stood nearby, sizing them up contemplatively. At his arrival they all whipped their heads up toward him, even April, in a manner that made Leonardo nervous.

"Good, he's done," announced Raphael. "Yo, Leo, c'mere a minute!"

Leo eyed them warily. "What for?"

"Just c'mere!" Raph made an impatient gesture.

"We're trying to figure out who's tallest," Donnie informed him.

"So far Raph thinks it's him," sniffed Mikey, not bothering to hide his skepticism. "He hasn't shut up about it since."

"What's the big deal about being the tallest?" Leo demanded even as Donnie and Raphael maneuvered him into place.

"Hey, size is _everything_, bro. And I'm gonna prove once and for all that I've got the lion's share." Raphael stepped back into position. "So, April, what's the verdict? Do I make Fearless Leader here look like a midget or what?"

April cocked her head to one side and then the other, clearly amused by their little brotherly competition. "Well, Raph, it looks like you're still the tallest."

While Raphael puffed up proudly, Leonardo smothered his smile as he abandoned his slight slouch and squared his shoulders back.

"Oh, oh, wait…actually, you and Leo are about the same height. I think."

"Say what?" The redhead lobbed a glare at his raven-haired brother, who returned it with his best guileless expression.

"No, wait, wait…" amended April. "Actually, Mikey's the tallest. By a whole two or three inches."

"_What_?" came the chorus from Donnie, Raphael, and Leo.

Mikey sniggered, trying to affect a modest tone as he buffed the back of his nails against the front of his shirt—suddenly understanding why people on TV did it. "Aw, don't take it too hard, guys. It's not your fault you're all a couple of shrimps…" He broke off as his body suddenly wobbled.

Donnie spotted the reason immediately. "Mikey, you're standing on your toes!"

Raphael advanced menacingly toward his light-haired sibling. "Why, ya little—and I do mean _little_—"

"Shrimps, huh?" Don said dryly as he stood by and watched Raphael close in on Michelangelo.

Mikey began to back up, hands raised in an attempt to ward off his irked brother. "Sheesh! You guys're so sensitive. You know, that kind of size-related sensitivity could be a cover for some seriously deep-rooted insecurities that—"

"I'll give you something to get insecure over!" Raphael lunged forward to seize him, but missed as Michelangelo squeaked and darted behind the nearest safety barrier, which happened to be Leonardo.

"I don't see why we need to squabble over how tall we are," Leo declared, grunting a little as Mikey and Raph played tag over and around him. "It's not like we're going to be stuck in these bodies any longer than we have to. Once we find out who's responsible, we're getting ourselves back to normal."

"That's right." Donnie snapped his fingers. "When you were in the shower, I remembered something: the GPS devices in our Shell Cells and hover boards. Once we get back to the lair, I can access my computer and track them down wherever they are."

"And once we locate them, we might be a step closer to finding out who did this to us," Leonardo realized, knocking his fist into his palm. "Good thinking, Don. I can't believe we didn't think of that sooner."

"Well, what're we waitin' for?" queried Raphael, attempting one last grab at Mikey over Leo's shoulder. "Let's head back to the lair so Don here can put his big brain ta work!"

"Good idea," said Mikey, clinging to one of Leo's arms as he concentrated on planting the latter between himself and Raphael. "Master Splinter should be starting to worry right about now."

"I'll go with you," April offered. "It'll be easier if you guys had someone Splinter could recognize right away. We'll go through the secret passage in the basement. Just…give me a minute to change, okay?" She paused for a second, her gaze landing on the blue-bandannaed teen and the word "TIGHTASS" displayed prominently across his top. "By the way, Leo," she added, clicking her tongue wickedly, "nice shirt."

She vanished into the hallway, and Leo braced himself for the barrage of taunts from his smirking brothers (whom he now knew for _sure _had conspired to make him wear it). Oddly enough, none of them said anything.

Not immediately, anyway.

"Yeah, Leo," Raphael uttered after a brief lull. There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth that belied the solemnity on his face. "That's a…nice shirt, all right."

Michelangelo grinned, completely forgetting that he was still using Leo as his barricade against Raph. "Yeah. I mean, sometimes, when you won't cut us a break during training and all…"

"…it's kinda fitting," Donatello finished, smiling faintly.

"Thanks," Leonardo said. "Nice to know you guys were looking."

He thought it was almost worth wearing the damn shirt, if meant being able to see those looks of slack-jawed shock on his brothers' faces.

* * *

April had no shoes big enough to fit their feet, so Raphael had to make do with Casey's ratty old sneakers—which pinched his toes with every step he took—while Donnie, Leo, and Mikey were stuck wearing the three largest pairs of flip-flops she had (Mikey had protested passionately against the pink blossom pattern of his pair until April produced a substitute: her grandmother's enormous Pilgrim-style black pumps).

Still, despite their barely passable footwear, their trek through the sewers was a bit more comfortable this time around. The boys stuck to walking the gutters instead of wading through the water, only now beginning to appreciate the kind of hiking trip April, Casey, and their other human visitors had to undergo to visit them. With their new lair farther away from the city center than the old Y'Lantian one, the journey was a moderately lengthy one.

"How do you think Master Splinter's gonna take it?" Mikey wondered as Donatello punched in the access code to the lair.

"He'll freak out and then he'll get over it," predicted Raphael. "How else would he react?"

"Uh, I dunno. Maybe he'll scream and faint, then wake up, then scream and faint again, then wake up, then scream—"

April planted her hands on her hips. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Hell no," snorted Raph, just as the entryway hissed open.

They all filed silently into the lair. The enormous reservoir below cast a bluish flickering reflection across the walls and stairwells. In one corner the TV terminal was on, showing a commercial for cotton underwear, but the main chamber seemed to be deserted.

"Hello?" Mikey hollered suddenly into the space, making them all start. "Hello! Master Spliiin-ter! Wanna guess what happened to us today?"

April put a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Let me talk to him first. It might be a little easier if I were the one to start—"

"My sons?"

Everyone froze as the elderly rat emerged from his room and made his way toward them. His dark eyes widened then narrowed as he saw the four unfamiliar humans April had seemingly ushered into his home.

April stepped forward. "Master Splinter…"

He held up a paw, and she obediently fell silent as he continued to study the four intruders. The boys for their part fidgeted self-consciously under their sensei's scrutiny, like children awaiting some sort of rebuke, or disapproval, or outright dismissal.

Splinter sniffed once, looked again from one earnest-looking teenager to the other—from the redhead at the far left in his sleeveless top and sweatpants, to the black-haired boy with his red shirt with the nonsensical slogan, to the brown-haired male in the dark blue button-up and tan slacks, finally to the strawberry blond at the far right in a hoodie and jeans—and reached out, taking the redhead's left hand and the blond's right in his own.

"My sons," he repeated, and this time it was not a question.

On the TV, a blurb for the local evening news was playing, the announcer barely able to read her cue cards with a straight face.

"…_a nudist colony training kung-fu teenagers in New York? Several eyewitnesses discuss their strange alleyway confrontations: details at eleven…" _

* * *

End of Chapter Three

* * *

Closing Notes: Personally, I think Raphael ought to be the tallest. He's like a freaking giant in _Fast Forward_—at least, judging from what I've been able to watch of the series. If you ranked the turtles' ages according to physical characteristics, Raphael, who's the biggest, strongest, and has the deepest voice, should very well be the eldest (which is weird, because I had him pegged as the second-youngest back when I was a kid watching the original cartoon).

Anyways, I'm sorry for the delay in this chapter—I had midterms all week. Icky.

I wanna say hi to the new reviewers, and thanks to everyone who's commented both on the story and the art. I admit, the story portion's going a bit slow right now, but I didn't want to skimp on the boys dealing with their new bodies, and at least in this chapter I managed to shoehorn in a few glimmers of some upcoming difficulties.

The boys' human appearances I based on their voices, which is actually pretty easy to imagine—I think most of you got which one was which! I'm rather glad that I got each turtle to keep their respective color for one of their human features: the hair for the two more extroverted ones, the eyes for the two more cerebral ones.

Please let me know how I'm doing—sometimes feedback actually makes me write faster. I'm considering taking a beta reader to keep my creative juices going (because _Fast Forward _isn't cutting it for me, and the next "Ninja Tribunal" episode is taking forever to come out!). Or I should just start reading TMNT fanfic again, soon as I have the time…

_**Next: **__Splinter tests the boys' altered states, Casey joins in on the fun, and the ex-turtles return to the scene of the crime—only to run into yet another snag. _


	4. Breadcrumbs

Author's Notes: I can't believe that years after I've gotten over my childhood TMNT obsession, I'd end up writing fic about the new series. All characters, places, and scenarios within belong to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Mirage Studios.

Inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here" from the original cartoon. If you know what happens in this ep, then you know what happens here. This takes place after the "Ninja Tribunal" storyline (what I've seen of it, anyway).

* * *

Beasts and Men  
Chapter Four: Breadcrumbs  
by Skyle

_Even with devils  
We prefer the ones  
We're used to.  
_—old Japanese proverb

* * *

When his sons had grown old enough to comprehend that they existed in a world where mutated turtles were aberrations, they had been understandably distressed. As time went by each child came up with his own way of coming to terms with it: Raphael added it to his ever-growing list of Things That Pissed Him Off, Donatello read and then threw away his books on human biology, Leonardo never talked about it again, and Michelangelo went through a brief period where he doodled nothing but pictures of himself and his brothers as humans.

Now, years later, Splinter reflected on those crayon drawings and marveled at the eerie accuracy of his orange-banded son's imaginings. There was Raphael with his sturdy physique and unkempt red hair (though his eyes were dark green instead of burning with fire, and his teeth were decidedly non-serrated), Donatello's down-to-earth appearance and docile stance (no oversized glasses, though, or oversized head), Leonardo's crossed arms and acute blue eyes (a brunette, not a blond, and certainly not shiny all over), and Michelangelo, carrot-topped and lively, springing up and down on his ten toes.

At the moment all four were gathered around the couch before him—Raphael and Donatello sitting down, Leonardo standing behind it, Michelangelo flitting from one sofa arm to the other—while trying to narrate the events of the past several hours.

"…we woke up in the Volpehart Building…"

"And we already looked like this…"

"Naked!"

"The monster was back…"

"—but maybe it wasn't the same one, because it was much smaller—"

"But we kicked its butt!"

"Naked!"

"…then we needed some clothes and we ran into these Purple Dragons…"

"So we kicked _their _butts…"

"_Naked_!"

Raphael managed to catch the back of Mikey's head with his palm as he darted by. "Enough with the 'naked' already! Believe me, we don't _need_ the reminder!"

"Well, it was traumatizing!" Mikey fluffed the back of his hair where Raph had smacked him. "Hey, I barely felt that! I think I'm starting to like this whole having-hair thing—it's softening your blows, Raph!"

"That's not the only thing it's softening," Raphael growled.

Splinter shot April a questioning look; the latter shrugged, indicating that she didn't know any more than the ex-turtles.

"And then you all regrouped at Miss O'Neill's apartment and came here?" queried Splinter.

Leonardo nodded. "That's right, sensei."

Raphael scratched at the beginner's whiskers on his chin as he thought of something. "Eh, Master Splinter, not that I'm knockin' your abilities or anything, but when we entered the lair, how come you were so sure it was us?"

"You mean, aside from the fact that you were wearing your headbands, carrying your respective weapons, were accompanied by Miss O'Neill, and had come in through the front entrance without the use of force?" Splinter's eyes twinkled with his patented brand of gentle sarcasm. "Actually, Raphael, your scents are essentially the same, despite the change in your bodies or whatever odors you might choose to cover yourselves with." His expression turned bemused as he stared at his red-bandannaed son. "Including, apparently, gardenia and honeysuckle."

Raphael's complexion suddenly adapted the tinge of his favorite color. "It's April's! _April_'s! Aw, shut up!" he barked at his brothers, who did not cease their snickering.

"Hey!" April looked offended. "That soap's expensive!"

"Maybe it's because of the barrel of perfume they put into it," Mikey giggled, dearly wanting payback for the underwear incident. "Cheer up, Raph—at least now I don't have to hold my nose when I sit next to ya!"

Before Raphael could reimburse him for the comment, Splinter rapped his tail against the floor to steer their attention back to the business at hand. "So am I to understand then that you all are, at least for the foreseeable future, stuck in these human forms?"

"It seems that way," Leonardo said. He glanced up at the elderly rat, his face hopeful. "Then again…Master Splinter, the first time we came up against that alien entity, it hypnotized us and imprisoned us in these pods. It fed us these horrible illusions to keep us passive—they were all in our heads, but they seemed so real. Like that astral attack those Foot mystics carried out on us."

"And you believe that your current conditions may be a side-effect of an illusion you may be experiencing right now?" prompted Splinter.

The four teenagers nodded apprehensively, remembering the centuries-year-old corpses that had been incarcerated in the other cells, their minds forever trapped in their worst nightmares even as their physical bodies withered away.

Splinter was quiet for several seconds, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "No, my sons—as impossible as your present dilemma may seem, this does not seem to be an illusion. I cannot sense any disturbance within the astral plane, nor have I sensed anything out of the ordinary all day." As his sons' faces cleared, he added pensively, "Nevertheless, I shall have to do some deep meditation later, just to make certain."

"Thank you, sensei." Leo inclined his head slightly.

"In the meantime," Don declared, springing to his feet, "I'm gonna check my computer and find out where our hover boards and Shell Cells went."

April and Splinter watched as the four teens fairly flew across the lair toward Donatello's workstation. They tottered a bit thanks to their uncomfortable footwear—Raphael finally yanked Casey's sneakers off his feet and threw it clear across the room at the couch, while Mikey tossed his flip-flops off with a couple of cha-cha-type kicks—but eventually they managed to settle down long enough for Donatello to start up the GPS program.

"Look! It's blinking!" Michelangelo jabbed his finger excitedly at the onscreen grid, unceremoniously clamping his other hand over Don's head as he leaned forward. "Four of 'em! Blinkies! There! Four! Blinkies!"

"That's right, Mikey." Don carefully and calmly extricated his brother's fingers from his skull. "Those four 'blinkies' are our hover boards."

"So where the shell are they?" barked Raphael, squinting closer as he replaced Mikey's palm on Don's head with his own.

"Well, if I could actually _see_ the coordinates," Don said with a trace of annoyance as he shook Raphael's hand off of his hair, "I'd say our hover boards are currently located—that's weird—under Beaver Street."

"But there ain't nothing 'round Beaver," interjected Raphael.

"No, but Beaver intersects Hanover," Leonardo said. He was standing with his body at an angle to the console, one hand braced against a corner as he craned his neck toward the screen. "And Hanover intersects—"

"Wall Street," Mikey finished for him, hazel eyes wide. "Whoa. We were goofing around near the Volpehart Building? I didn't even know we'd wandered that far!"

"We were exploring," Donatello reminded him, his brow creasing as he proceeded to call up the second set of trackers. "We weren't exactly paying attention to the map, remember?"

Raphael aimed a glare at his orange-banded brother. "Well, _I _remember Mikey splashin' me with sewer water."

"And I remember you over-reacting and chasing me across half of underground Manhattan," retorted Mikey.

"And Don and I followed," Leo recalled. "And then, after that…it's all a blank."

"So Mikey here practically led us to the Volpehart place!" accused Raphael.

Michelangelo's expression turned defensive. "Hey! Before you start pointing fingers, just remember _you're _the one who threatened to turn me into a pincushion and made me start fleeing in the first place! Besides, you guys didn't _have _to follow me."

"It doesn't matter how we ended up there," Leonardo interrupted before his brothers could indulge any further in the Blame Game. "It happened. Let's just focus on how we're going to fix it."

"Look, I found the Shell Cells." Donnie pointed at the screen. The grid had shrunk, showing four smaller blinking dots arranged in a haphazard line. He hit a button and the previous four dots flashed into existence, just several squares away from the new ones. "They aren't far from the hover boards. Could they have been shaken loose by whoever stuffed us in those pods under the Volpehart Building?"

"I don't even remember being stuffed inside a pod," Mikey admitted. "Like Leo said: all I remember's running away from Raph…and then nothing after that."

Raphael pounded one side of the workstation, causing Don to flinch. "We musta gotten ambushed!"

"And whoever was responsible might have left a clue," said Leonardo, pushing himself away from the console.

"So…we go back to the scene of the crime?" Michelangelo queried.

"We go back to the scene of the crime," confirmed Donnie, picking up a portable tracker and getting to his feet.

They nearly made it to the entrance when their sensei spoke up.

"Stop right there."

The four teenagers stopped immediately, and April had to regard the elderly rat with admiration; he could not have been more effective had he accompanied his words with the crack of a whip.

"Let me see if I understand your intentions," Splinter began, purposefully making his way toward his transformed sons. "You wish to return to the area where you were attacked by a mysterious enemy who managed to catch the four of you off-guard, erased all memory of his attack from your minds, and somehow altered your physical forms for reasons unknown?"

The boys looked at each other.

"Yup, that sounds about right," Mikey said cheerily.

Splinter stared up sternly at the quartet, his neck tilting backward further than he was used to—his sons now stood nearly a foot taller than they had this morning. "I do not believe I have to remind you how extremely vulnerable you are in this state. You are in no shape to risk returning to the domain of an enemy you do not even know."

"Aw, come on, Master Splinter," protested Raphael. "We can handle ourselves just fine. I mean, we took out that monster right after breakin' out of our cells, didn't we?"

His sensei appraised them all a moment longer, then rested both his hands on top of his walking stick. "Very well," he said. "You shall go…_if _you manage to get by me."

The boys' faces reflected a mixture of surprise, hesitation, and dismay.

"But, sensei," Donnie tried, "if we don't get back to the area as soon as possible, we might lose any clue the alien entity or whoever did this to us might have left behind."

"It has been more than six hours since then. I have the feeling five more minutes is not going to make any difference." Splinter raised a furry eyebrow. "Or perhaps ten, if you insist on talk instead of action."

It was obvious that he was not going to change his mind anytime soon, so Raphael aimed a shrug at his brothers and met Splinter's challenge head on.

He had every reason to be relatively confident: after all the clashes they'd had over the past year with increasingly skilled opponents, the weeks of arduous training under the Tribunal, and that epic final battle with the original Shredder, Raphael was fairly sure that he'd improved enough to take on his sensei. So what if his body was a little different, or that he could not twirl his sais right? His accuracy was still as lethal as it ever was, his ninjitsu instincts sharpened to near-perfection by Bishop and his lackeys, the resurgent Foot, and the Shishou.

Splinter ducked his initial strike, which was completely expected; it was a feint, anyway. The real blow came in the form of a kick—which the rodent promptly sidestepped—and then, because the added length of his extended leg meant that he needed a quarter-second longer to retract it, Raphael realized that he'd left his sensei an opening. And Splinter did not disappoint him, grabbing his bare ankle and using momentum to hurl the red-bandannaed boy past him.

Michelangelo and Donatello attacked in tandem, something that might have been devastatingly effective on anyone else. Splinter, however, merely took advantage of the fact that Donatello had overreached—a combat slip that would have been invisible to a less-trained eye—and simply knocked him off-balance with a jab of his own elbow. Almost simultaneously he evaded Michelangelo, who had overcompensated on his leap, had helped him with his excessive trajectory by planting the tip of his weapon against the latter's chest and arcing both it and Michelangelo over his head.

Both teens had barely been disposed of when Raphael launched his second assault, this time armed with his sais. Splinter parried the first one with his stick, dodged the second with a flip. Then for the first time he went on the offensive, spinning his own weapon so fast it became a blur in his hands. Raphael had to fall back, but only temporarily—he found himself successfully blocking his sensei's strikes. His satisfaction did not last long, however: Splinter suddenly changed his rhythm and began angling his blows from several different directions. Raphael managed to deflect a couple before having to duck a horizontal swipe. An eye-blink later Splinter was bearing his weapon down on his son's crouched form, and Raphael reflexively turned his back toward it, anticipating that his shell would absorb the blow, just as it had a million times before.

Of course, in the heat of the skirmish, he had forgotten that he no longer had a shell.

Later on, Raphael would appreciate the fact that his sensei had taken the effort to soften the blow as best as he could, even at that velocity. At present, however, he was in no mood to be contemplative.

"_Ow_! _Son of a_—!"

Raphael bit off the rest of his expletive under the heat of his sensei's gaze, and concentrated on rolling off to a safe distance where he could mouth a protracted string of profanities intelligible only to an experienced mouth-reader.

Splinter cast one last concerned look at his silently cursing son before shifting his attention back to the others. Michelangelo and Donatello had elected to stay down, ostensibly having understood the point their sensei was trying to make. Leonardo, on the other hand, appeared to not have moved at all, nor did he look like was intending to anytime soon.

"Leonardo?" Splinter queried. "Why did you not attack me?"

"Because I agree with you."

" 'Scuse me while I recover from the shock," Raphael mumbled, straightening back up to his full height while subtly rubbing that sore spot between his scapulas (bones he had never once felt in his entire life, much less even thought existed).

Leonardo blew out a breath, causing the locks of hair hanging across his left eye to flutter. "He's right, Raphael. We aren't completely used to these bodies. It'd be stupid to go charging back into the Volpehart caverns like this. Maybe we could handle that alien's kid brother back there, but against something bigger or someone more combat-trained, we'd be sitting ducks."

Splinter tilted his head to one side. "Well, then, Leonardo, tell me what weaknesses a skilled opponent would be able to pinpoint and exploit with your new bodies."

The blue-banded teen chewed on his lip, trying to recall the checklist he'd hastily compiled in his mind while he'd been fighting the beast under the Volpehart Building. "We're taller, so our center of gravity's changed. Our limbs are longer, which means we'll be more likely to over-reach, or overshoot our landings. Our sense of equilibrium is way off, even though our weights probably haven't changed that much. And we haven't learned to compensate for the absence of our shells."

Donatello and Michelangelo nodded at the appropriate intervals as their sibling catalogued the differences; Raphael merely coughed something that might've been "Teacher's pet," but fortunately it was old schtick for Leonardo.

"It also feels different, too, internally," Donatello chimed in, rubbing the back of his neck. "Our metabolisms have probably changed a little, as well as our body temperatures."

"You mean because we're not cold-blooded anymore?" queried Mikey.

"Actually, 'cold-blooded' is an archaic term. It's more scientifically accurate to refer to it as 'ectothermic', meaning that that body temperature is maintained by external means. Then again, if you threw in additional factors like resting temperature and resting metabolism, then our kind of ectothermy is more endothermy, or so-called 'warm-blooded', but to a slightly lesser degree—"

"Yeah, yeah, enough with the geek-speak," Raphael cut in impatiently. "I get that we ain't the same inside, either."

"Wow," April muttered from the sidelines, more to herself than anyone. "I never thought about it that way. That's actually kind of fascinating."

Donnie brightened considerably at her input. "Yeah, isn't it?"

"And in addition to the external and internal changes," Splinter put in, "you all will also have to contend with identifying certain combat techniques that are more suited to turtles than humans." He sent a meaningful glance at his sulking red-haired son. "Perhaps you were able to handle that alien entity—which you yourselves admit was much smaller than the original one—but what if you were to run across someone who could take advantage of your current weaknesses?"

Raphael averted his eyes, but made a grudging sound of agreement.

"So what do we do?" Mikey wanted to know, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet. "We just can't leave our Shell Cells and hover boards for someone to take. I mean, true, there's no one there but creepy skeleton dudes, but still!"

Splinter mulled this over for a couple of seconds, then walked over toward the entrance. "I shall accompany you." He looked inquiringly over his shoulder. "Miss O'Neill?"

"I'm coming with you guys," she declared, in a tone that dared them to disagree with her. "I could be extra backup, plus I could give Don a hand with the equipment you guys'll need if you're going to do some serious investigating."

"Very well," Splinter acquiesced as the entrance slid open.

"All right, let's go!" Mikey cheered as he sprinted through the doors and out into the sewers. A second later he ran back in, his face scrunched up in disgust. "Aw, my feet's being all sensitive again! It's like wading in a sewer!"

"You _were _wading in a sewer," Don pointed out.

"I know, but now it's really _wading in a sewer_. I can feel, like, every grain of dirt and ball of slime!"

"Then wear the flip-flops I let you borrow!" ordered April, a bit miffed that her good deed was going unappreciated.

"But they're too small, and I can barely keep them on," whined Michelangelo. "_And _they've got flowers on them!"

"Well, it's the only footwear you got, so suck it up," Raphael said unsympathetically, squeezing his feet into Casey's ill-fitting sneakers.

"Easy for you to say," shot back Mikey. "You got the only manly footwear among us." He paused. "Then again, I guess you need something manly to balance out the fact that you smell like a girl."

Just then April's Shell Cell trilled. She answered it while Raphael hopped over toward Mikey, arm extended and promising some measure of vengeance. "Hello?"

Casey's grinning face appeared on the tiny screen. "Hey, babe!"

"Casey!" she exclaimed happily. Behind her the ex-turtles glanced up from their little scuffle. "Where're you? I didn't think you'd be back this early! How's Mrs. Jones doing?"

"Oh, Ma's great. I still can't beat her in push-ups, though. You know, I went straight to your apartment soon as I got back, but when I knocked but you weren't there, so I figured you'd be over at the guys'."

"Yeah." April shot a glance at the boys, all mussed hair and bright eyes and trussed up in her boyfriend's spare clothes and shoes. "There was an, um, incident."

"What is it?" Concern flooded through Casey's expression. "Are the guys all right?"

"Oh, they're okay. More or less…" April trailed off, unsure on how she was going to explain this.

More than a year of passionate bickering with April O'Neill had granted Casey a sixth sense when it came to things left unspoken. "April, what's happened?"

April looked at Splinter, who nodded, and turned back to the phone. "Casey, listen, how soon can you come to the lair?"

"I can be there as soon as possible without breakin' the speed limit," Casey vowed.

"Good. And Casey?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you do me a favor and bring over four pairs of your good shoes and some socks?"

"Eh? What for?"

* * *

"Whoa."

Casey blinked, leaned his head one way, then the next, as though viewing the boys—presently standing in a line and leaning against the entrance doors in various positions—from different angles would somehow change them back to their original species. It didn't, of course, but each angle seemed to warrant a "whoa" of a different length, pitch and intonation.

"Whoa. Whoa. _Whoa_."

"Casey," Raphael growled, "I know vocabulary ain't your strong point, but if you say 'whoa' _one more time_…"

"Awww, look at Raph tryin' to act all tough with the flarin' nostrils and everything!" Casey teased, as usual completely unfazed by the redhead's threats. "Ya know, suddenly y'don't seem all that intimidatin' when you've got eyeballs and pimples and stuff."

"Yeah, well, I got five fingers now, too—you wanna see what I can do with 'em?"

"_Raphael_!" Splinter rebuked sharply, less than pleased at his son's newfound ability to pull off the single-finger salute.

His three other sons shook their heads at the exchange and went on lacing up their new footwear. Casey Jones was one of the very few individuals who could talk to Raphael like he had an ongoing death wish.

"Oh, man, this is totally nutso. I can't believe you guys're human!" Casey crowed. He slapped his knee, then stopped. "Uh, Mikey, you gotta put some socks on first."

Mikey looked down at his sloppily laced shoes. "Aw, do I gotta? But they're all itchy!"

"Better itchy than gettin' foot fungus, or your foot sweat gettin' all over my Nikes."

"Feet _sweat_?" Mikey pulled a face and proceeded to pull off his shoes. He wriggled his toes, all ten of them, complete with toenails.

Casey goggled in astonishment. "Damn. You _know _you've been exposed to too much weirdness when you're more amazed by human beings than mutant turtles."

"Well, don't get used to it," advised Leonardo as he took a few experimental steps in his new footwear. "As soon as we get to the bottom of this, we're turning back into mutant turtles."

The vigilante scratched his head good-naturedly. "Heh. I guess being human's overrated, huh?"

"It's not that. It's just…" Leonardo thought about the clothes on his body wrapped about him like a loose second skin he couldn't shed, the bruises still tender on his back, the missing weight of his shell, the unsettling feeling of his limbs being out of proportion, and the ends of his fringe stabbing irritably into his eyes. "It just feels unnatural, I guess."

"No sweat. I getcha. Believe me, I'd be kinda freaked out, too, if I became a big giant talking turtle."

"Casey Jones, teenage mutant ninja turtle?" Mikey said with a delighted grin.

"It boggles the mind," murmured Donatello. It was hard to tell if he was fascinated or horrified by the idea.

Raphael, on the other hand, had already sketched out a mental picture of Casey green and shelled, toting a golf bag on his carapace full of bats and autographed hockey sticks and giving Master Splinter headaches. "Hah! With a mug like his, he'd still hafta wear his hockey mask, or maybe a polka-dot headband to distract attention from his face."

"Eh, what d'ya know, Raph? You can't tell good-lookin' even if it bit you in the keister." Casey huffed in mock outrage, which dissolved into recognition as his eyes drifted to Leo's apparel. "Hey, haven't I seen that shirt before?"

Leonardo grimaced and folded his arms yet again over the degrading slogan. "Uh, yeah. It's the one you got last Christmas. I'm just borrowing it. Don't worry, though—you'll get it back as soon as possible, I promise."

Casey held up his hands. "Naw, it's cool. Glad to help you guys any way I can." He looked off toward the other end of the lair as April approached, bearing the gear she had offered to fetch while Don and the others tried on their new shoes. "I don't even mind that you guys borrowed my underoos, too. Can't be havin' you guys goin' commando with my pants or anything, right?"

Unnoticed by him, the ex-turtles traded shifty glances.

"Underoos?" Mikey demanded, talking out of the side of his mouth. "Does he mean underwear?"

"Were we _s'pposed _to wear underwear under these things?" Raphael hissed back. "Like it ain't constricting enough wearing pants!"

"I didn't see any underwear laid out for us, not even inside that hamper," pointed out Don.

"In any case, I don't think Casey'd be very happy to find out that 'going commando' is exactly what we're doing," whispered Leo.

"Maybe it's a human thing?" offered Mikey.

Casey swung back to face them. "Yo, what're you guys whisperin' about?"

"Nothing," the four teenagers said immediately.

Master Splinter cleared his throat. "Perhaps you could all enlighten me about something that has been troubling me for a while now."

Everyone looked at him, expectant and apprehensive. It wasn't often that the ninjitsu master required help from individuals who were decades younger than he was.

"Perhaps I just need to brush up on the current slang," said Splinter, "but in what context exactly is this 'tightass' referring to?"

Thankfully April reached them just then, thereby saving them all from an explanation. "Here you go." She beamed, completely misinterpreting the immensely grateful looks everyone (save for Splinter, who for some reason just looked confused) was pelting her with. "So, what do you need this equipment for, anyway? Are you guys planning to go spelunking or something?"

"Or something," Donatello replied mysteriously, accepting the duffel bag from her.

April cocked a red eyebrow toward Casey. "You _do _know we're probably going to be poking around in a big scary cave that's possibly occupied by a tentacled monster specializing in nightmares, right?"

"So? It'd be just the thing I need to unwind after a day with Ma." Casey returned her smile with a lopsided one of his own. "You know, she was askin' about you. I mean, considerin' the fact that she never mentions more than once the names of any a' the girls I bring home, that's really sayin' something."

April blushed and stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. Halfway there she changed her mind as she realized that they were not exactly in the most private spot, and the two of them settled for nudging each other's arms instead. Despite the fact that they had been exclusively dating for the last couple of months, the two of them were still oddly self-conscious about displaying affection in front of the boys, who did not miss a single opportunity to tease them or act like they might be infected by the cootie bug.

True to form, Raphael smirked, obviously intending to rag Casey later about his de-evolution from macho vigilante to a pathetic pile of lovey-dovey man-goo, while Mikey clasped his hands together and made kissy noises. Leo couldn't help casting a sideways glance at Don, who appeared to be studying a patch of loose wiring dangling from the ceiling.

"It is nearly nine," Splinter informed them. "We had best get going."

Leonardo nodded. "All right. Let's roll."

They filed all out of the lair in relative silence, with Donatello in the lead armed with his tracker. Raphael and Casey brought up the rear.

"Yo, Raph, is that gardenia and honeysuckle you're wearing?"

"Casey, if you sniff me again I'm rammin' my sai up your nostrils."

* * *

They found the hover boards exactly where the GPS said they would be—in the sewer mains underneath Beaver and Hanover. The vehicles were undamaged, their hover capabilities still on. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like their riders had merely parked them, and then never came back.

The surroundings were equally inconspicuous; if the ex-turtles had truly been taken against their will, they did not seem to have put up much of a struggle: there were no signs of violence anywhere, nor were there—to the boys' dismay—any clues as to who had caused them to abandon their boards.

But Don was not about to be deterred by the lack of visible evidence. He fished out a device from his duffel bag, plugged it to his laptop, and set them carefully on his hover board before crouching down next to where Leonardo's board had been located. The others watched as he pulled on gloves (awkwardly—it was a pair of the three-fingered ones he and Leatherhead had rigged up together) and procured a sample of grit and sewer water, which he then deposited into a compartment underneath the device. With that done, he carefully peeled off his gloves and began to type rapidly into his laptop.

"Uh, Don? What's that?" Mikey queried curiously, pointing at the blinking device.

"It's a kind of analyzer. It's going to tell me what our environment's composed of."

"Good thinking," declared April, leaning over to peek over Don's shoulder. "Once you decide what the natural components are, it'll be easier to isolate any foreign particles from the environmental makeup."

Mikey glanced at Casey as though for help, but the vigilante shrugged apologetically. "Just nod and smile, man. That's what I do."

"I get it. It's like one of those things the FBI uses to find forensic evidence and that kinda thing," drawled Raphael. "I saw somethin' like this on TLC."

"You actually watched something educational?" Mikey asked skeptically, and quickly moved out of Raphael's bopping range.

"It was an accident. He saw blood and gore and thought it was one of those eighties action movies," explained Leonardo, his eyes peeled to Don's monitor.

"Well," Donatello allowed, "it _is_ kind of similar to what the FBI uses, except this of course's a little more sophisticated. See that?" He indicated a string of text that looked like gobbledygook to everyone else except him and probably April. "There's a foreign substance mixed in with the usual sewer matter. It doesn't match with anything on my database."

Splinter had wandered off a little further into the tunnel, eyes closed as he inhaled the dank air. "Indeed. There was something else in here along with you…although I fear I do not recognize the scent."

"Does it smell a little like sulfur?" Leonardo asked, on a hunch.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

The blue-bandannaed teen met the collective gaze of his brothers. "That's how the creature smelled."

"So that thing _did _ambush us," Raph said angrily. He still didn't trust his ten fingers enough to twirl his sais, so instead he fingered them where they had been anchored on his belt loops. "Damn it! If that freak weren't dead, I'd kill it all over again!"

"Is there any way you can identify that foreign substance, Don?" April wanted to know.

"Maybe if I got it back to my lab. But even then I'd need something to compare it to." The brown-haired youth stroked his chin. "Still…any of you wanna bet it'd be a perfect match if we compared it to the goop we were soaked with when we were inside those pods?"

* * *

The path from there to the Volpehart caverns could not have been plotted out by anyone but a madman: a couple of sharp turns here, a few labyrinthine twists there, ascents up water mains and descents down multiple levels of ladders. Marking the path like metaphorical breadcrumbs were the boys' lost Shell Cells, unscathed and completely turned off. At the end of an underground switchback so sudden they had to catch their breath was a pipeline that looked unfinished, as though its builders had discovered some architectural error midway through and had decided to restart at some other point. On one side was a gaping hole that led into a dirt passageway that looked like it had been burrowed by a giant subterranean worm (an observation that did not sit well with the group). Several hundred meters in, the passageway swelled so abruptly that the rise of the ceiling nearly a hundred feet upwards came as a bit of a shock, and the cavernous area they stepped out into was alarmingly familiar to the boys.

They all withdrew their weapons on principle, but the place appeared to be as deserted as the boys had left it hours before. The echo of their voices and every sound they made seemed to underscore its emptiness. Without the crimson glow or the scarce daylight, it was even dimmer here than usual, so April distributed extra torches.

It was only when they emerged into the main chamber that Splinter winced, put a hand to his forehead, and admitted that the aura of darkness the permeated the Volpehart caverns was finally getting to him.

"I have been aware of it since we came across your hover boards," the ninjitsu master rasped as Leonardo and Michelangelo helped him to a nearby flat outcropping of rock. "But it was merely a trickle then. The sensation has been growing stronger the closer we have gotten to these caves. Even in the absence of a solid form, the stench of evil tends to linger—even now it weighs upon my spirit like a boulder."

"Should we turn back, Master?" Leonardo looked torn; he was concerned for Splinter, but he was also as eager as any of his brothers to see this investigation through.

"No," Splinter said firmly. "I will be all right. Whatever resided in this place, however malevolent it may have been, it is but a ghost now. Nevertheless, my sons, stay on your guard."

"You don't gotta tell us twice," Raphael muttered as he and his brothers began to spread out across the area.

Donatello made a beeline for the cells that had housed him and his siblings—they were the only ones that had been torn open. The first thing he did was grab a handful of the remaining goo inside.

"Ugh," Casey groaned as he observed the teenager's actions. He had his trusty baseball bat out (the one signed by Ty Cobb—nobody really knew why he insisted on using his prized memorabilia as weapons, but Casey seemed to think autographed items conferred some measure of luck). "Is that where you guys got morphed?"

"I don't know," admitted Don, "but it's where we first found ourselves like this." He carefully stored the goo away in a sample case for further study.

Casey eyed the scores of pods that stippled the walls and pockets of the cavern. "Ain't you gonna check the others?"

"Better they be left in peace," Leonardo told him tersely. "They're dead."

Casey gulped. "Oh, yeah, those walking skeletons and Civil War-era dead guys you mentioned. Gotcha."

"That's horrible," April said, reaching out to touch one of the unopened pods. Unlike the ones the ex-turtles had emerged from, the membrane was brittle and taut, ready to snap under further pressure. "So that…_thing _used human beings for sustenance for hundreds of years?"

Mikey nodded. "Icky, huh?"

"More like the emotions of human beings than the human beings themselves," Leonardo clarified. "Or at least that's what I understood. We didn't get much more than the basic rundown on it. I mean, the first time we came here we didn't exactly stick around any longer than we had to."

"Of course," Splinter murmured from where he sat. "If the creature fed on negative emotions, it would explain the malevolence that clings to this place. There are few things more destructive than the blackness that lies inside any one of us."

There was a silence after that, as though they were all anticipating a tentacle or two to snake out of the umbra like an exclamation mark to his sentence. But nothing happened, so everyone breathed out and went on combing the area.

To their disappointment, the cave yielded no more of its secrets. There were no hidden compartments, no physical remnant of their enemy, not even a Chihuahua-sized version of the alien entity (assuming it had regenerated since the second time they had killed it). Their initial cageyness eroded with each uneventful minute that passed by, to the point where Raphael and Casey annexed a flat-topped piece of rock and commenced an arm-wrestling contest to amuse themselves despite Leonardo's insistence to go over the area one more time. Even when Donatello donned his spelunking gear and explored as much as he could of the chasm—he could not be lowered all the way down, since the cables were simply not long enough—nothing came to light.

An hour later, Michelangelo was sprawled on his back making a game of tossing pebbles with his new toes (both he and Raphael had chucked off their shoes, complaining that they were too hot and conveniently forgetting their earlier foot pains), Raphael and Casey were on their twenty-sixth arm-wrestling match (the score was Casey nineteen, Raphael seven, which partly explained the continuous rematches), April and Donatello had run out of alternative ideas to extract additional information from the environment, and Leonardo had completed his sixth thorough sweep of the site.

"I almost wish that monster'd come back and attack us," Michelangelo complained from where he lay on the ground. "Or even the walking skeletons. I don't mind the walking skeletons anymore. Anything but this mind-numbing _boringness_."

"That's right—your mind's numb enough as it is," Raphael cracked between grunts as he and Casey continued to battle.

"It does seem kind of hopeless," Don said bleakly, putting away the last of his equipment. "Aside from that goo, I don't think there's anything else we can find here that'll tell us anything about the circumstances of our condition."

"So are we gonna be stuck like this?" Raphael growled. Casey took advantage of his lapse of concentration to slam his fist down onto the rock. The redheaded boy swore under his breath. "Hey! That wasn't fair, ya no-good dirty cheater! I want a rematch!"

Casey crossed his arms. "Why bother? I'm gonna win that one, too. You're kinda puny as a human, huh, Raph?"

"Casey, don't provoke him," April said, a scolding that proved fruitless as Raphael shot up from his seat and body-slammed the long-haired vigilante. She resigned herself to watching as the two of them rolled around the cave floor in one of their usual macho scuffles. "Sometimes I think for every step Casey makes toward maturity, he takes two back," she sighed to Donnie, who smiled obligingly and seemed to grow taller.

"Well, at least they look like they're having fun. Maybe we should do a pileup—_hey_!" Mikey sat up indignantly as he was hit by one of Casey's or Raph's flailing limbs, though he did not get up. "Would you two watch it!" he yelled.

Splinter held his hand to his forehead again, though this time it was more of a "_Kids_…" gesture than an expression of discomfort.

"Maybe if you wouldn't be so bored if you actually—I don't know—helped me search this place one more time," Leonardo testily informed his reclining brother. He intercepted the pebble Mikey toe-tossed into the air.

"Newsflash, bro: we've searched this cave about a gazillion times. There's nothing left. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not even that nasty tentacled thingy's embarrassing pictures or personal diary." He strained his foot toward Leo's hand, toes flexing. "Um, can I have my pebble back?"

"Wait!" Donnie exclaimed. "Mikey, that's it!"

"What's what? My pebble?" Mikey asked, sounding confused.

"No, what you said…it gave me an idea."

"Mikey said something that gave you an idea?" Raphael demanded from where he had been able to manhandle Casey into a headlock. He sounded equally confused.

"What is it, my son?" prodded Splinter.

"That thing Mikey said about a diary—it reminded me." Donatello glanced around at the group, his purple headband nearly black in the sparse light. "When Mr. Volpehart was telling us the story of the creature, he read it out of a journal. Maybe there's something in there that might give us answers."

"Yeah, since we're obviously not gonna find any of that in this place," groused Raphael. Casey took advantage of his lapse in concentration and head-butted him in the chin, and thus their wrestling match resumed with a vengeance.

As the others went to pry them off each other, Leonardo gave the area a final once-over. The cave was as reticent and inert as ever, but he couldn't help but feel that it was mocking him somehow. He wanted to stay and yet he couldn't wait to leave this cursed place wallpapered with the husks of human beings who had put the promise of wealth above their own lives.

"Let's go upstairs," he said, finally, and lobbed Mikey's pebble back out into the dark.

* * *

There was no underground mechanism to trigger the stairs and the floor opening into the Volpehart Building itself, so they backtracked into the sewers and found the nearest manhole. It had to be nearly midnight now; the late hour helped considerably in concealing the seven figures that climbed out from the tunnels underneath Wall Street. The Volpehart Building wasn't far, but they took the ninjitsu route and stuck to the shadows: the ex-turtles found old habits hard to break, and Splinter _was_ still a giant mutated rat.

The buildings that lined Wall Street were still awake, inhabited by caffeine-fueled stockbrokers, overworked pencil pushers, and various company bigwigs doing overtime. By comparison the Volpehart Building was dim and muted—not very unusual, since it was an old-fashioned edifice flanked by two blazing skyscrapers on either side—but the barricades that had been erected about it were certainly new.

"I think it's been locked up," April whispered as they squinted at it from their hiding place next to the sprawling steps of the building across.

"Could be 'cause of what happened to old man Volpehart," said Casey. "I know now that he kicked the bucket, but a couple of months ago everyone was talkin' about how he just disappeared inta thin air. There was s'posed to be a big investigation over it or somethin'. I don't think the cops ever solved it."

"Poor old Mr. Volpehart," Mikey said sympathetically. "I wonder if he even got a proper burial."

"Of course not—who would look twice at a pile of ashes in his office?" retorted Raphael. "I mean, shell, Mikey, you even stepped on the poor geezer."

Mikey scowled at his redheaded brother. "Thanks, Raph—just when I nearly scrubbed that particular memory from my brain!"

"I'm going in for a closer look," Leonardo spoke up suddenly.

"But what if the building's closed?" asked Donatello.

"Then we'll break in if we have to."

His brothers looked at him, slightly startled by the edge in his voice.

"Look, the answers we need could be in there," Leo explained shortly. He didn't know why he was so antsy, but it was something that had been progressively building since their descent into the caves. "Besides, it's not like we're going to rob the place or anything. We're just going to borrow a journal or two."

"I'm with you, Leo," Casey piped up. It wasn't as if he and the guys had never skirted the edge of the law by breaking into private property before. "You comin', April?"

"Actually, it might be better if my sons were to scout the surrounding area first and take note of any cameras or security guards," Splinter admonished gently. He nodded at the four teenagers. "Be careful."

The boys needed no further urging; almost immediately they were across the street, making sure to stay out of the patches of light emanating from the moon, the nearby streetlamps, and the general illumination of the financial district. Upon closer inspection it became clear that the Volpehart Building had been made absolutely off-limits: boards over the windows, mounted cameras, a slender sort of barbed wire coiled round the top of the makeshift fence.

"Wow. They _really _don't want anyone in here," Donatello murmured as the four of them flattened themselves against the wall of the adjacent building.

"Maybe they're afraid of the place gettin' robbed," suggested Raph. "I mean, that Volpehart geezer's supposed to be really loaded, right?"

"That's an understatement," Mikey scoffed. "I heard he could've bought Donald Trump fifty times over with the amount of interest in his bank account alone."

"Where'd you see that?" asked Donnie, genuinely curious. Mikey was not exactly the sort to pay attention to capitalist goings-on. "_Forbes _magazine? _Wall Street Journal_?"

"Nope. _The Fabulous Life of Wall Street Billionaires _on VH1," Mikey replied, rather smugly.

Raphael dragged a hand down his face. "You are still _such _a mutant."

"_Guys_," Leonardo said in his best "let's-focus" voice. He took his bandanna from where it had been dangling about his neck and pulled it to its proper place over his eyes. The mask was a tangible reminder of his real self; with it on he felt more like the ninja he was instead of that befuddled, awkward-looking human boy he'd seen in April's bathroom mirror. "We'd better spread out. Keep an eye out for any possible entrance points."

They split up. Leonardo had just spotted a loose board on a third-story window when Mikey began waving; apparently he'd found something. His siblings quickly made their way over to him, nimbly outmanuevering the cameras.

"What? You found something?" Raphael wanted to know.

Mikey jabbed a finger at a rectangular sign that had not been visible from their previous hiding location. "The building's been sold. That's why it's been locked up."

"Yeah, and we care about this why?"

Donatello had finished skimming through the sign, the crease between his brows deepening. "Oh, you're gonna care, all right. Guess who the new owner is."

Raphael didn't even bother reading the text; his eyes had latched onto the familiar red symbol displayed prominently at one corner. "You have _got _to be freakin' kidding me."

Leonardo's eye-slits narrowed into slivers of white as he read the last couple of words out loud. " 'Purchased by Saki Enterprises'," he said darkly. "It figures."

* * *

End of Chapter Four

* * *

Closing Notes: Or is it Saki Industries? The Saki Corporation? I've checked "New Blood", "Exodus", and other eps, but I don't think the name of Shredder's business company is ever mentioned. I mean, I _know _it's got to have one. Maybe I missed it somewhere, but if any of you guys know what it is, please let me know. I'll be sure to correct it. If not, I'll just leave it as "Saki Enterprises" (it always seemed strange to me that everyone referred to Oroku Saki as 'Mr. Saki', which, ostensibly, is his first name).

Anyway, I'm so sorry for taking even longer with this chapter. The closer I get to finals week, the harder my classes become. Plus I'm a bit anal when it comes to writing: I like playing around with words and approaching scenes from several different angles. Plus the boys' banter tends to go on their own digressive tangents sometimes, to the point where I have to snip out bits and pieces in order to keep the length down.

Again, thanks to everyone who reviewed! You guys are great encouragement. I've recently learned that the 'turning-human' premise—in addition to not being an original one—is not a popular one either, so I'm just glad that there're actually people who're reading this. The theme might be one that's been done a lot, yes, but I also have some story ideas that I don't think have been implemented before (um…at least, I _think_ they haven't).

Thanks again, and I'll try to be faster with the next update.

_**Next: **__The boys try to get through their first full day as the wrong species (while plotting yet another break-in), Angel is called in to help, and Leonardo sees dark dragons._


	5. Old Wounds

Author's Notes: I can't believe that years after I've gotten over my childhood TMNT obsession, I'd end up writing fic about the new series. All characters, places, and scenarios within belong to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Mirage Studios.

Inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here" from the original cartoon. If you know what happens in this ep, then you know what happens here. Takes place after the "Ninja Tribunal"/Lost Season storyline, so there are minimal spoilers (such as one or two quotes from the first four eps). Since I haven't seen how the season ends, I'm going to operate on the assumption that the only shift in the status quo from Season Four is the Foot's shaky truce with the turtles in exchange for their protection of Karai from the original Shredder.

* * *

Beasts and Men  
Chapter Five: Old Wounds  
by Skyle

* * *

"Why would the Foot want to buy the Volpehart Building?" Mikey asked casually, as though he wasn't currently dangling one-handed from a rope three stories off the ground.

"Who knows? Maybe they got tired of gettin' their asses kicked and decided to go into the real estate business," retorted Raphael from right below him. His view was not exactly primo, but at least there was denim this time, and not for the first time that evening he felt a rush of gratefulness for the self-conscious caveman who had invented clothing.

"Don't forget that the Shredder—Oroku Saki—used to moonlight as a businessman while he was also being the crazy genocidal crime lord we all knew and loved," Donatello reminded them. "This is, after all, a guy who once donated a hundred million dollars to the city."

"Blood money," was Leonardo's succinct contribution. As the first one on the rope, he reached the window with the loose board and began to pry it off.

"Hey, there's an idea." Mikey blew a chunk of wayward bangs off his forehead. "Didn't Mr. Volpehart say something about how greedy, power-hungry people were drawn to this place? I mean, considering ol' Shred-Head, to him this building must've stuck out from the rest of the city like a giant zit on someone's nose."

"_Brilliant _metaphor, Mikey," grumbled Raphael.

"But accurate," said Donatello. "You'd think he would've bought this building sooner."

"Maybe he couldn't, not with Mr. Volpehart still in charge of the place," Mikey said.

"Plus Mr. Volpehart had that giant alien thingy for backup," Raph declared. He snorted as an idea occurred to him. "Wonder if the Utroms knew that they weren't the only aliens settin' up shop in New York."

"I wouldn't be surprised if even the Utroms didn't know about Mr. Volpehart's benefactor," said Donatello, "considering the way it managed to keep itself hidden all these years. I mean, the fact that it could mess with people's memories…"

"And the fact that it, like, _ate _everyone that came across it," Mikey added, his human tongue sticking out between his teeth like a peculiar pink candy.

"Ha! Maybe it ate our reptilian bodies and vomited up these human skinsuits we're now wearing," Raphael said jokingly. Or at least that was how he tried to make it sound. Don and Mikey frowned down at him.

"Oh, and you're complaining about _my _metaphors?" groused Mikey. He turned his gaze beseechingly up toward his purple-banded brother. "You don't think that's what happened, do you, Don?"

"Well…the truth is, other than what we've experienced and what Mr. Volpehart told us, we really don't know all that much about that alien entity."

"Which is why," Leonardo stated, "we need that journal. Or any other source of information we can find in this building." He checked for any possible sensors or alarm systems before he tossed in the planks he'd torn out, then clambered inside. His brothers followed suit; Raphael yanked loose the grappling hook that secured the rope, rolled up the entire apparatus, and dumped it into Donnie's duffel bag.

The place appeared even more desolate inside than it was outside. With the help of the soupy moonlight pouring in from the unblocked window, they could see that the room—which at one time might have been a spacious side office—had been emptied of all its furniture, light fixtures, and any sort of interior décor. Donatello took out a torch from his bag and flicked it on, as though there was something to bump into.

"You know, the Foot could've at least renovated the place," Mikey cracked. "The setting is _still _very 1600s Transylvania. Actually, it looks even more authentic now, what with the nice addition of the spider-webs and all."

"It don't look like anyone's been in here for months," Raphael stated, idly stabbing a nearby web with the point of his sai and regretting that there wasn't a bug in the middle of it.

Donatello ran his index finger over the wall, scraping off a thin film of dust. "Not that long. Probably three months at the most."

Mikey was starting to wander about; despite his earlier remark, he was glad that the gothic ambiance had all but vanished along with the snarling gargoyle sculptures and creepy paintings. "So that means that it wasn't actually Shredder who bought the building—it was Karai."

They all waited for Leonardo to contribute something to the conversation since this seemed to be the most logical place for him to jump in. Instead he just "hmm"ed noncommittally as he did a circuit of the room. He no longer tensed up or, as he did during those dark pre-Ancient One days, got that halfway homicidal look in his eye (like he was seconds away from slicing something—someone?—with his swords) at the mention of her name. Which suited his brothers just fine.

"I wonder what Karai wanted with this place," Donnie mused. He tested the doorknob of the only exit—an intricately carved pair of double doors—and found it unlocked.

"You don't think _she _found out about that alien thingy, do you?" Mikey said as they all trooped through the double doors and out into the main antechamber.

The Volpehart Building was antiquated both in look and architecture—though this might be explained by the fact that it was as old as the country it financed—and resembled a grand mansion more than a contemporary fiscal hub. In the middle was the massive central staircase that led all the way to the ground floor; tucked away to the sides were tube-shaped elevators, one of the building's few concessions to modernity. Leonardo went straight for the stairs, and his brothers hurried to keep up with him.

"Hey, yeah. Maybe it was Karai who was behind this!" The idea of a new culprit to blame for their dilemma was appealing mightily to Raphael, mainly because she was still alive and punchable, which was more than could be said for the alien entity. "Maybe she struck a deal with that alien whackbag and this was what they came up with!"

He said it partly to see if Leonardo would defend her like he used to—he'd stopped after the spaceship incident, but still continued to cut her far too much slack, at least in Raphael's opinion—but his raven-haired brother remained maddeningly quiet. It was Donnie who replied instead.

"Turning us into humans was the best revenge Karai could come up with?" the purple-banded boy asked doubtfully.

Mikey raised his hand like a student in biology class. "Um, maybe she was hoping we'd all turn out to be butt-ugly humpbacks and she and the Foot could point fingers at us and make fun?" He arranged his features into his best sheepishly charming grin as his brothers stared at him. "Good thing we turned out fine, right? Well, 'cept for Raph."

Raphael was too riled up by the Karai scenario to physically castigate him this time. "At least I don't look like I'd be overdosing on surfboard wax! Look, if Little Miss Shredder now owns the place and she's found what's under it, who's to say she didn't have a hand in doin' this to us?"

"It still doesn't make sense," hedged Donatello.

"Yeah. Besides, the last time we saw her we helped her against that demon-Shredder dude," Michelangelo reminded them all. He had a point: the last time they had dealt with Oroku Saki's daughter, they had allied with her against the wrathful original Shredder—thereby choosing the lesser evil, as it were—and when it had all been over she had refrained from trying to kill them in return for their aid. She had been willing to at least postpone her vengeance then and hadn't tried to attack them since, but both parties were well aware of the addendum of their newest pact: _If we meet again, all bets are off._

"Yeah, well, remember when she talked 'bout a truce when we stuck our necks out for her during that gang war? Tell me you all remember how _that _ended up," seethed Raphael. Really, his brothers were so naïve sometimes it made his teeth ache.

"Raph, let's see if she found the entrance to the caves first, okay?" Leonardo spoke up, finally, as the four of them reached the front lobby. Like the rest of the area, it had been stripped bare; the candlesticks, chandeliers, paintings, sculptures, and the bust of C.H. Volpehart were all gone.

"Um…so any of you remember how to work the incredibly creepy staircase of pure undead skeletal doom?" Mikey inquired, half-hoping for a chorus of negatives.

"It was Angel who triggered it last time," Donatello recalled.

"I think she pushed somethin' behind one of these." Raphael tugged at one of the enormous tapestries. "Like a button."

They searched the space concealed behind the wall hangings (once or twice Mikey sneezed at the amount of dust that tornadoed into the air, mumbling something about how _huge _human nostrils were), but to no avail.

"Are you sure it was behind a tapestry?" Michelangelo asked, then sneezed a third time.

"It _was_ behind a tapestry," insisted Raphael. "Some kinda panel or something. It had the exact same picture as the floor."

They all glanced down. On the floor the floating eye at the top of the pyramid shone white in the weak light, glaring up at the four trespassers as though daring them to reveal the secret that lay beneath.

"Maybe someone covered it up?" offered Don, not very convincingly.

Leonardo abruptly stalked toward the stairs.

"Where ya goin', Leo?" Raphael barked.

"Mr. Volpehart's office," the black-haired boy replied without breaking his stride. "I need to see if they took everything there, too."

He probably knew as well as his brothers there was an excellent chance of that, judging by the barren nature of the corridors and other rooms. Maybe he needed to see it with his own eyes, confirm it for himself.

"Maybe we ought to call Splinter and April and Casey for help," Donatello suggested as they approached the entrance on the second floor. "If I remember correctly, Mr. Volpehart's office could've passed for a library—there were so many books; it'd take us ages to sift through all of them—"

Leonardo pushed the doors open. Behind it the office was scarcely recognizable, bereft as it was of the firelight and decadent turn-of-the-century furnishings that had been there on their only visit. The room was one big negative space, its walls lined profusely with shelves that extended from floor to ceiling and had once been crammed with thick leather-bound tomes. This was clearly was not the case now.

"—or not," Don finished forlornly.

"Great. Just great." The disgust in Raphael's voice resounded loud and clear in the emptiness of the abandoned office.

"There isn't anything left," Mikey commented. It was a pointless thing to say, he had to admit, but this dead end they had run into in the course of their little fact-finding mission seemed to warrant some form of verbal commemoration.

"Of course not," Leonardo said with what might have been sarcasm in his voice, had he practiced more at sarcasm. "That would've been too easy."

* * *

They unbarred the front door while Splinter herded April and Casey in past the security cameras and sensors, even though there was essentially nothing in the building to sort through. It took less than half an hour to ascertain that all the other rooms were similarly bare, and so everyone reconvened at the lobby to comb over its walls one last time. This time they managed to isolate a hollow-sounding spot underneath one of the tapestries, thereby lending some credence to Donatello's theory about the panel having been concealed for reasons yet unknown.

It took them several minutes to decide against smashing in the wall to find the trigger: it was evident enough that the hidden stairwell had not been accessed recently—if the pile-up of dust and decay on the near-invisible fissures was any indication—and none of them were particularly eager for a second pointless foray into the caves. There was nothing else to see in the building, and so it was with some reluctance that they decided to leave (while being careful to eliminate any trace of their break-in).

By now it had to be past one in the morning and everyone was in no mood to tromp back to the lair on foot, so Donatello called in the Battle Shell via remote. The boys fetched their hover boards—which they'd left in the gutters across from the Volpehart Building—as they waited for their ride. Once the truck arrived, the weary contingent piled in and Casey volunteered to take the wheel. He met no resistance.

For some time the trip home was a nearly silent affair; the boys were either too tuckered out or too wrapped up in their own musings to bicker or crack jokes or strategize. April tried to be quiet as she rolled down the tinted-glass partition that separated the front passenger seats from the fully equipped, state-of-the-art command center that had been installed in the back. For some reason the last thing she wanted to do was rouse the boys from their various states of cogitation; even Splinter had elected to remain mute, arranging himself into a semi-meditative position at the rear of the truck. It occurred to April that perhaps it was now just beginning to sink in for the ex-turtles that there would be no prompt cure for their conditions—at least not tonight.

Donatello had cloistered himself off, predictably, in the extended lab he'd fit into the back of the van, testing the samples he'd gotten (even though it was practically a foregone conclusion that the goop near the hover boards would match the one in the pods). There was Raphael on the floor behind the driver's seat, grimly fiddling with his sais in a way that indicated he'd be flinging them like darts if he could. Sitting on one of the console chairs was Mikey, finally drained of his seemingly limitless brand of energy, his elbow propped up on a console and his fist against his cheek, head bobbing drowsily. At the far end was Leonardo, standing and holding onto the rim of the overhead fixture, wearing that closed-off expression he got when he was mentally chasing a long shot, or several.

They looked, April realized with a pang, like a quartet of high schoolers who'd stayed up too late on a school night. Then she blinked, and suddenly the boys were back to being _her _boys, the ones who regularly broke into government strongholds and highly guarded skyscrapers and tussled with despots as a lifestyle choice. Somehow these new forms made it easier for her to remember how young they were, what with their bared irises, the new gangliness of their limbs, the slump of spines that used to be concealed with carapace.

Before she could reflect further on this paradox, Donatello stood up, brandishing a syringe. His brothers' heads whipped up immediately.

"Um, Don? Any reason you're coming toward us with that thing?" Mikey piped up warily. April knew that needles made him twitchy; actually, it made all of them twitchy. Maybe it was because they'd never needed to be inoculated. Maybe it was because the idea of being pierced by anything sharp was anathema to them—as it should be for any armed fighter.

"I need to run some tests," Donatello explained, trying to sound stern and only partially succeeding. "You know, to check if we don't have any weird mutagen in our systems, or viruses or any other kind of abnormality."

"Can't we just get some X-rays? A CAT scan? Metal detectors?" Michelangelo pressed back into his seat, his green-gold eyes fixed on the gleaming needle.

"We'll get those, too. Well, not the metal detectors." Donatello grimaced slightly as he saw the matching looks of distaste stamped on his brothers' faces. "C'mon, guys. I don't like it any more than you do, but it would make me feel a lot better to be sure that our molecular structures are stable and that we won't just dissolve into a puddle of DNA in the middle of the night."

"I'd rather dissolve into a puddle of DNA," Mikey declared, rocketing up from his chair and retreating to the other end of the truck. "Actually, no, I don't. But I know _I'm _fine. I mean, I'm a regular Brad Pitt! Only, like, thirty years younger and…April, you've got eyes. I look normal to you, right?"

April reached through the partition and patted his shoulder in sympathy. "Sorry, Mikey. Don's got the right idea." And it _was _a good idea, April thought—why hadn't Don brought it up before? A second later she realized why: it was the first time all night his brothers had been confined to a closed space with walls reinforced with inch-thick bulletproof armor.

Mikey got as far as squeezing his upper torso through the partition window (startling Casey enough for the van to do a dangerous wriggle), but April, Splinter, and Raphael intercepted his lower half in time. Leonardo held Mikey's arm steady and Don managed to get the business done relatively quickly in spite of their orange-banded brother's theatrics.

Leonardo was next; he wasn't any more enthusiastic about it than Mikey, but he willed himself into some kind of Zen trance while Don stuck him with the needle. Next was Raphael, who postponed his turn as long as he could by arguing vociferously about how stupid and pointless this was, how if something really was abnormal with them then Mikey would've already showed some indication of that, etcetera, etcetera. But he finally wrenched out his arm and let Don take his sample, grumbling and snarling throughout the whole thing.

Donatello could rewire alien gadgetry and snip micro-cable connections to disarm ticking bombs, but the notion of sticking a needle into his own vein was something else entirely, so April offered to do it. She swabbed his wrist with cotton and laid her thumb on it, feeling for the throb of a blood vessel. Under her hands his skin was pale like it hadn't seen much sun (though it wasn't the same kind of pale as hers or Leonardo's) and warmer than usual, she observed with some interest; perhaps it was the switch to a wholly endothermic metabolism, like Donatello himself had explained earlier?

She completed the task with minimal movement from the purple-banded boy. But even after she withdrew the needle and plugged up the dribble of blood, he didn't move.

"_Breathe_, Don," Leonardo said abruptly.

Donnie stopped turning blue as he obeyed, finally realizing that he'd just put his lungs on park. His cheeks colored in embarrassment. "Whoops," he mumbled.

_Wow, he must really hate needles, _April thought, before soothing him with: "Don't worry about it. You were great." She handed him the syringe with his sample inside. "Here you go. I'm sure this'll help you with your tests. Who knows, you might even come up with a cure yourself."

Donatello took the syringe back, his indigo eyes reflecting a rarely seen confusion. "Cure?"

"To turn you guys back into turtles, of course," April said matter-of-factly.

"Oh. Of course! Yeah." The brown-haired youth pulled at his bandanna—still hanging about his neck like a necktie—and took a couple of steps backward before retreating to the safety of his lab. "Thanks, April!"

"No problem," she replied, a bit puzzled. She'd never imagined that his discomfort with needles could be this profound. Even Leonardo was gazing after his brother with a scowl of concern.

"Any of you wanna bet he's gonna stay up all night staring at our blood?" Raphael said in a sotto voice.

Mikey poked Leonardo's shoulder. "I _told _you. Just watch—he's gonna start trying to stuff us into jars. Or test tubes."

Leonardo made an affirmative but distracted sound, so Raphael took up the thread of conversation.

"He doesn't need all of us t'play guinea pig. He'll just pick one of us," the redhead pointed out, slanting a discreetly evil look at Mikey. " 'Course, you're the most obvious choice, being as you're human and you're still a freak of nature."

"Uh-oh. I think someone's jealous of someone else's good looks," Mikey taunted, his tone singsong.

"Yeah, well, I think _someone _else's asking for _someone _to mess up those imaginary good looks with an old-fashioned ham sandwich—"

"For what it's worth," interjected April, "I think you guys all turned out pretty nice-looking." Better than nice-looking, actually; none of them would've been out of place on a clothes catalog. Of course none of the turtles, with their personalities, would settle for being merely mediocre, April mused, and—now that she'd embarked on that particular train of thought—wondered if the boys _had _gotten any say on how they were to look like as humans.

"Complimentin' other men now, babe?" Casey teased from the driver's seat, just now tuning in to the conversation. "Should I be worried?"

April tossed him a sweet smile. "Oh, yeah, Casey, especially if they're nice and mature and don't leave the toilet seat up every time they come over."

Casey's face fell. "Aw, c'mon, April, are ya still in a snit over the last time that happened? I told you I was sorry an' all, and I did go to the store ta pick up your feminine—"

"Ew! Domestic co-habitation talk!" Mikey clapped his palms over his ears. "Don't wanna hear this! La, la, la…"

Raphael instantly took his orange-bandannaed brother's side, forgetting their little spat. "Case, you know whenever ya start talkin' like this, it kills what little respect I got for ya, right?"

"Whassa matter? Can't stomach grown-up talk?" shot back Casey before arching an eyebrow at his girlfriend. "And you think _they're _mature?"

April tried to tamp down on the heat on her face; though she and Casey still lived in very separate apartments, it seemed inevitable that in the future this would change. "Well, um…at least they're mature around sixty percent of the time!"

"Fifty percent," said Splinter suddenly.

They all glanced down at the elderly rat, who cracked open one eye before disentangling himself from his meditative position.

"_Ouch_, Master Splinter," Mikey remarked, holding a hand comically to his heart.

"We're plenty mature," defended Raph. "Otherwise you wouldn't be lettin' us play with sharp objects, right?" He tapped the pad of his finger against the point of his sai for emphasis.

"As a great sage whose name I forget at the moment once said, 'You are only young once, but you can be immature forever.' " Splinter looked his sons over with no small measure of fondness before schooling his features into a suitably grave expression. "I have been meditating hard since the visit to the caves. I know that you are concerned that this may all be an elaborate hallucination, but I have still yet to sense any astral forces at work, or any disruption in this reality. No, my sons, whoever did this to you did so through very corporeal means."

"Very scientifically impossible means," April could not help but add. "So…what's the next course of action?"

"We could find the Volpehart journal," Mikey said. "The one the Foot took."

"Hey, there's an idea." Raphael feigned interest in the point of his sai so as not to come off too bloodthirsty.

"We can't just break into Foot Headquarters," Leonardo declared.

Everyone looked at him (even Casey, who was driving). It was the first thing he'd said in a while.

"Why not?" demanded Raphael. "Don't tell me you've run outta ways to break in there." He couldn't believe that Leonardo—who could probably now write a comprehensive "How to Break into Foot Headquarters" manual—was chickening out of this.

Leonardo swept a disbelieving eye over his brothers. "We have a truce, remember? Granted, it's a very feeble truce, but we said we'd honor it. The longer we stay out of each other's radar screens the better."

"And even if you should choose to pursue the option of confronting Karai and the Foot over this, I would advise you to tread carefully," warned Splinter. "To provoke them so soon after we have agreed to this stalemate may risk triggering the cycle of violence between us all over again."

"We never minded that before," said Raphael, rather testily.

"We weren't humans before," Leo retorted. "Like you said earlier, Master Splinter—against someone who'd know how to exploit our inexperience with these new bodies, we'd be at a disadvantage."

"But Leo," ventured Mikey, "what if Karai had something to do with our transformation?"

"If she's broken her word, then we'll deal with her. But until we're certain, we stick to our end of the bargain. Besides, how do we even know she's got any of the books from Mr. Volpehart's office in her personal possession? She could've stored it somewhere else, or auctioned it off."

"I could find out for you," volunteered April. "It'd be a snap."

The black-haired boy acknowledged her offer of help with a small smile. "Thanks, April."

Raphael looked like he wanted to shake his brother's shoulders and yell at him that they needed to make a move now, _now_, but something in his sibling's expression seemed to stymie whatever objection he might have made. So instead he leaned back against the truck wall and wedged the end of his sai underneath one of his fingernails, a new tactile sensation. "And what happens if Little Miss Shredder does have the book?" he growled. "Do we dress up in monkey suits, go up to her penthouse, and ask real nice, maybe bring some flowers?"

Leonardo locked his fingers together and pulled them across his forehead, flattening his fringe back over his scalp as though trying to stave off a migrane. "Look, if we operated on the assumption that Karai does have the information we need, that still would mean that we won't be able to acquire it right away. So for the time being all we can do is wait for Donnie to finish his tests and search for other sources of information."

"_What _other sources of information?" Michelangelo wondered. "The alien thingy's gone, there's nothing in the cave, the building's empty, no one's attacking us on the astral whaddayacallit, and Mr. Volpehart isn't exactly up for a talk anytime soon."

"What about Angel?" Casey suggested as he zoomed past a yellow light.

"What about her?" grunted Raph.

"You guys left her with that Volpehart guy to keep her safe while you went to rescue her brother from that alien monster. She was the last person to see him alive, right?"

"Yeah…" Mikey said slowly.

"I remember she told me 'bout it. Said that she talked to a three-hundred-year-old man and didn't even know it. They gabbed a bit about the history of the Volpehart line and she went through some of the books there to pass the time. Maybe she remembers something. I could bring her around to your place tomorrow and you guys could ask her yourself."

April seized his hand, her green eyes alight with admiration. "Casey, you're a genius!"

"You shoulda got that on recorder, 'cause that's the last time you're gonna hear her say those exact words in that exact order," said Raph, but he was grinning.

"All right." Leonardo nodded, seemingly encouraged by the scent of a fresh lead on the case. "If you could ask Angel to drop by tomorrow, Casey, we'd be really grateful."

"You got it, Leo." The longhaired man made a left. "We're almost at the lair. You guys don't mind if I borrow one of your bikes to drive me and April home, do ya?"

"Please, go right ahead," said Master Splinter. "It is the least we can do to thank you for your aid tonight."

"Hey, what's family for?" April smiled at the elderly rodent. "Anything you guys need us to get for you?"

"Naw." Mikey stifled a yawn. "We're cool."

"You sure?" April raked her gaze over the boys. Far in the back, Donatello was typing furiously at his console, occasionally scratching at his shirt collar as though the material were bothering him. Raphael had unfortunately discovered that manly pastime of cleaning his fingernails with pointy objects (in this case, his sais). Leonardo kept tugging at the hem of his slightly too-tight sleeves, and Mikey was loosely pacing about and yawning, hands stretched high over his head. The hem of his hoodie rode up, and his jeans—an old, comfortably oversized pair that was part of Casey's professed couch-potato uniform—slumped down his lower body, revealing the jut of lean hipbones meeting waist…and the fact that there was, indeed, nothing else under the denim. April let her eyes widen slightly before she swiveled in her seat toward her boyfriend.

"Um, Casey?"

"Yeah, April?"

"Can we swing by your place first to pick something up?"

"What for?" Casey Jones asked for the second time that night.

* * *

Michelangelo never got up earlier than nine if he could help it (except on Saturday morning, because that was when the best cartoons were on).

That night, however, he'd had the weirdest dream: he dreamed that he'd just hatched out of an egg, and that the top of his bald green pate had somehow sprouted a tuft of carroty hair. It looked ridiculous—though not as ridiculous as the nipples on his reptilian chestplate and the three extra human fingers that looked surgically attached to the two thick green ones he already had. He had a plastron and a shell, but he'd felt permanently and excruciatingly naked, as though there was a nonstop draft coming up from somewhere between his feet. And then he'd stumbled into a gigantic version of the lair filled with bare-assed humans who then proceeded to point and laugh at him like they weren't any more horrifying to look at than he was. Mikey could've sworn he saw Casey and April amongst the naked mob, which was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

He would've woken up screaming, but the sight of that slack human hand in front of his face was enough to stifle any noise he might've been inclined to make. The first thing that came to his sleep-addled mind was that someone had crawled into bed with him—a thought that was alternately scary and exciting—and he shot out from between the sheets like a loosed missile.

But then the human hand moved with him, and he realized belatedly that the hand had been attached to him all along. Blinking the haze out of his eyes, he took inventory of his body: ten flesh-toned toes, ten fingers, no shell, full head of hair on his head.

"Huh." He scratched the small of his back and yawned. "Still human."

No one had said it out loud, but they had no doubt thought it: maybe the next morning they'd wake up back and be back to normal. No such luck, it seemed.

Oh, well, at least he hadn't de-evolved into some grotesque half-turtle, half-human freak like in his nightmare. Or a puddle of DNA, like Donnie had warned.

It wasn't until his hand dipped low enough that he became aware that sometime during the night, he'd shed his clothes, including the boxers that Casey had oh-so-generously—and distraughtly—donated to him last night. They'd been chafing him, Michelangelo remembered; every time he tossed and turned all he could think about—besides the fact that he could toss and turn without the fulcrum of his shell—was the constraints of cloth. That was easy enough to ignore when he'd been awake with his mind preoccupied by other things, but not when all he wanted to do was doze off with his legs and arms splayed any way he wanted.

But now he was awake, and there had been enough overexposure the previous night to last Mikey for the rest of his life (well, the human portion of his life, anyway). He slipped on the boxers, and as he completed that mundane action he was reminded of the novelty of having a bellybutton.

It was a weird little thing, a hole in the middle of one's stomach. It didn't look much like April's—because he _had _looked; she was like a sister, true, but he was also a teenage male—since it was a protrusion rather than a depression. (What had he heard the kids on MTV call it? An "outie"?) It felt funny when he poked his finger inside, and when he pulled it out it stunk a little—what _was _that inside, anyway? Was it like some kind of bodily excretion like snot, or earwax?

Whatever. It was mesmerizing. No wonder humans liked to contemplate their navels.

He might have spent the rest of the hour doing just that, except his kitten Klunk chose that moment to rub against his bare ankles.

"Hey, Klunk!" Mikey scooped up the cat and stroked his ears for a bit. Last night his pet had initially hissed at this unfamiliar orange-haired human who had tried to pet him. It had lasted all of half a minute, however; Klunk had eventually recognized him in spite of his new exterior, in that telepathic way pets did, and found a favorite new pastime—chewing on his owner's brand-new head of hair.

"Ew! Kitty spit!" He gently pulled his hair out of Klunk's mouth and set the cat down. "Sorry, Klunk, but I already had my bath last night. And I'll get my own hair gel, thank you very much." He caught a glimpse of himself on the cracked glass of the jukebox he'd managed to salvage from his old room. The state of his hair made him look like one of April's old dolls, the ones with the gravity-defying pastel-colored locks, and he tried to use his fingers to comb it down. It was only a partially successful endeavor: his attempt to straighten out the tangles made him wince, and for the first time he understood why Splinter got so annoyed when he and his brothers hid his hairbrushes and special no-tangle shampoo when they were little.

"I guess I'll just borrow one of his combs later." Mikey paused, his nose wrinkling. "Then again, they're kinda full of fur…what do _you _think, Klunk?"

But Klunk had already located a suitable whorl in the folds of his blanket. He merely looked up at his owner through droopy eyes, yawned, and curled up to sleep.

Mikey put his hands on his hips in feigned annoyance as he gazed down at his pet. "I see the whole magic of me turning human's starting to wear off for you."

Klunk snored.

Just then the teenager's stomach growled, signaling its empty status. He trudged across his bedroom's carpet of crumpled papers, snack wrappers, empty pizza boxes, and various toys (all of which he would clean up one day, _really_, when he had the time) and let himself out.

He supposed he shouldn't be surprised to hear sounds issuing from the main chamber where Leonardo was immersed in his morning training. What _was _surprising, though, was that his brother wasn't performing his usual complicated string of katas—instead, he appeared to be doing basic gymnastics.

Well, not exactly basic—his brother seemed to be scrolling through the entire repertoire: handsprings, backflips, back tucks, pike somersaults, double and triple twist layouts. Gymnastics was more Mikey's thing—he could do them without thinking, while his brothers seemed to require a split-second of thought before launching into the maneuvers.

Then again, Leonardo was always thinking.

Mikey watched as his brother capped off a dizzying series of flips with a particularly twisty somersault. To anyone else the landing might have looked flawless, but Mikey spotted right away the brief miniscule wobble in his brother's legs.

"Whoa. Looking a little rusty there, Master Leo."

Leonardo glanced up at him, pushing his bandanna up his forehead. It was obvious that he had been at it for a while: his bangs clung damply to his skin and lashes, and his torso gleamed with a light sheen of sweat. Like Michelangelo, he was dressed in nothing but his boxers—a black pair with blue piping, also donated by Casey—and he was barefoot.

"You should've seen me when I started." Leonardo wiped the stinging-red palms of his hands on his boxers before proceeding to mop up his neck and throat with a towel. "I couldn't stick my landings at all. It was like I was five again."

"You know, I've been saying this to you since we were old enough to talk, and I'm gonna say it again…you take things _way _too seriously, bro."

Leonardo let the towel dangle from his neck. "Mikey, yesterday we were one foot shorter, couldn't scratch our own backs, and had no fingernails. Someone did this to us for a reason, and we're not any closer to finding out why. Can you blame me for being a little paranoid?"

Mikey shook his head in exaggerated sadness and draped an arm around his brother's shoulders. "Oh, Leo, Leo, Leo. And here I thought you'd become all enlightened and stuff. What happened to"—he pitched his voice into that mellow Zen monotone his brother tended to adopt when quoting long-dead sages, or Master Splinter—" 'we all have to flow with change'?"

"This isn't exactly a normal kind of change," Leonardo countered, but there was a tremor of a smile at the corners of his mouth. "And that doesn't sound like me. Unless you're going for the stoner version."

Mikey mock-gasped. "Ouch. How would I know how you'd sound like stoned? For that matter, how'd _you _know how you sound stoned? There something you're not telling me, Oh Principled One?"

Leonardo good-humoredly tousled his brother's already-disheveled locks and ducked out from under his arm to pick up his water bottle. "Okay, okay. Maybe you're right. I guess I should be grateful that for some reason whoever ambushed us thought changing our species was the worst he could do to us."

"No, the worst he could've done to us was turn us human and give us multiple chins, Donald Trump hair, and Austin Powers teeth." Mikey shivered.

Leo shrugged. "I wouldn't have cared less." It was true; he wouldn't have cared if his human form had turned out to look like Hun's and Garbageman's deformed third brother. Wait, maybe he would. A little.

"Of course you wouldn't. Because you're _so _not normal."

"Because it's _temporary_," Leo said, rolling his eyes. "The way I look now—it isn't really me. None of it is."

"Speak for yourself. Me, I think I turned out pretty hot, if I do say so myself. Like a mix of a young Robert Redford and Orlando Bloom"—"Last night you said it was Brad Pitt," Leo muttered under his breath, but Mikey wasn't pausing—"only with better hair. I am _so _gonna milk this thing while I can." Mikey cocked his head to one side. "Don't tell me you never thought about it."

"Thought about it?" Leo echoed mildly, as though he hadn't a clue what his brother was referring to.

"You know…" The strawberry blond held up his palm and made a little wriggly motion with his five fingers. "_This_."

"No."

Mikey rocked back disbelievingly on the railing. "What? Aw, c'mon, not even a little bit?"

"No."

"Not even the part about how it'd feel to be live up there like everyone else?" persisted Mikey. "Not having to hide all the time, not having people scream at the sight of you? I mean, even you must've thought about it once or twice."

"Why? It would've been a waste of time," his brother pointed out sharply. "It wasn't ever going to happen. There were more important things to think about."

Mikey's grin congealed a little as he watched the caginess creep back onto his brother's face. "Oh, yeah? Like what?"

"The usual. The Foot. Bishop. All the enemies we've made. How to keep ourselves one step ahead of them. Combat protocol. Worst case scenarios." Leonardo folded his arms over the railing next to Mikey, water bottle still in hand, and stared down at the reservoir. Mikey in turn stared down at him; it was weird to see how easily Leo's trademark stoic expression could etch itself onto his human features. "Those are the things worth thinking about. If I thought too much about the 'what-ifs' instead of the here and now, I'd lose focus, and I can't afford that."

The other teenager was mute for a couple of moments, seemingly contemplating his brother's words, only to blurt out gleefully, "So you _have_ thought about it!"

Leonardo regarded him with fond exasperation, his lids at half-mast. Whatever retort he might have come up with was forgotten as Donatello wandered into the main room. For a ninja, his entrance was rather noisy—his bare feet slapping against the concrete—but it was excusable, since he didn't seem to be in control of all his faculties just yet. He shuffled obliviously past his brothers on his way to the kitchen, hair sticking up in wayward brunette spikes and eyes almost lavender with the last remnants of sleep. Neither one of his siblings was surprised to see that he had not taken well to wearing clothes either, and had stripped down to his white boxers.

"He stayed up all night looking at our blood, didn't he?" Mikey said as he listened to Donnie sleepwalk his way through his coffee-making routine.

"When I woke he was passed out in his workstation with the tests still running," confided Leo. "He promised us last night he wouldn't overdo it, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, if you look at this from his point of view, it _is _kind of cool."

Mikey sent him a meaningful look. "At least someone else's getting some enjoyment out of this."

Leonardo dragged his teeth over his lower lip as though locked in some internal debate on how to word his response, but all he said was: "Well, Raph isn't exactly happy about this, either."

"Dude, it's _Raph_. Everything ticks him off. We could've been turned into the richest, handsomest, most butt-kicking mutant turtles in the universe and he still wouldn't have been happy about it."

Leonardo raised his eyebrows at his sibling's turn of phrase, but did not disagree. "Then I guess he'll be glad when Casey gets over here later with Angel so she can tell us what she knows. Then maybe we won't even need to get the journal from Karai, and maybe we'll be back to normal as sooner than we think."

"Not too soon, I hope. I wanna take this body topside first."

"You can't be serious." Leo eyed him as though the latter had just revealed his plans to elope with Kluh to Las Vegas.

"Uh, _hello_, Leo." Mikey gestured grandly. "We're human. We can walk on the streets the in broad daylight without covering ourselves in every piece of clothing known to man. We don't have to wait until another nighttime citywide blackout. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance!"

"I know that," Leonardo said reluctantly. Mikey could practically see his brother's ninjitsu instincts recoiling in horror. It was understandable, really; all their lives they'd been taught to be invisible, to keep the world above them at an arms' length, because discovery would damage their way of life, or end it entirely. But now here they were, contemplating an idea that went against everything that had been drilled into them since infancy.

It was an idea that was—as far as Mikey was concerned—starting to sound better and better the more he thought about it.

"It'll just be for a couple of hours." He began to swing his legs, getting more excited as he talked. "I could go to a real skateboard park without having to mummify myself. Don could go to one of those boring science gatherings without getting creeped by all those dissection-crazy eggheads. Raph could…um, he could…I dunno, break like three dozen laws and scare even more punks with that red mullet of his, and you could—"

"—stay in the lair and keep trying to get to the bottom of this," Leonardo put in. At his brother's disapproving/crestfallen expression, he went on, "Look, I know that's not what you want to hear. I wouldn't mind if you guys went topside and experienced what it's like to be normal. I mean, I'd like to, maybe, but…someone has to keep an eye on things, you know?"

Mikey looked away, remembering how subdued his raven-haired sibling had been last night. He wondered if there was something else troubling Leo aside from the vaguely sinister circumstances of their change.

"You know, Leo," he said in a tone that actually succeeded at being delicate, "the world isn't gonna end if you decided to think about yourself once in while."

Leonardo glanced up at him, but again was rescued from having to answer by Donnie, who had now apparently gotten enough caffeine into his system to follow his brothers' voices out into the main hall.

"Morning, guys." The brown-haired youth tossed them a smile, one half-finished cup of java in his hand. He took in his siblings' similarly half-dressed forms. "I guess you aren't feeling the whole sleeping-with-clothes concept either?"

"Nope," Mikey replied, just as Leo said, "I was practicing."

"You were?" Don said, as if he'd expected Leo to be doing something different this particular morning. "How did it go?"

"It was…" Leonardo tapped his pinky finger thoughtfully against his water bottle. "Informative."

"Really?" The sleep began fading from Donatello's eyes as his brain synapses began firing in earnest. "You know, maybe you could help me chart the differences in our physical abilities while I work on cataloguing the internal changes, like our comparative metabolisms and brainwave activity pre- and post-metamorphosis—"

"Don!" Mikey groaned, clapping a hand dramatically to his forehead. "No three-syllable words this early in the morning, please?"

Leo grinned. "Oh, let him be, Mikey. I don't think his brain's stopped running, even with that three-hour nap he managed to get."

Donnie smiled sheepishly, making more apparent the faint keyboard impressions on his cheek from where he'd dozed off on his workstation. "Well, can you blame me? This stuff's so fascinating I can't even begin to describe it. The DNA tests won't be done for a while, but at least I can say that physiologically, we're in the clear. No abnormalities, no tumors or irregular heartbeats, no internal microchips or electronic tags. We're healthy, functional, perfectly normal human beings."

"Except we're not," said Leo.

They fell silent after that, and for nearly half a minute the only sound was the liquid sloshing about in Donnie's cup as he stirred it with a series of circular movements.

"Um…you don't think this is permanent, right?" ventured Mikey.

"Not when we find out who's responsible and get him to turn us back," Leo stated. He didn't say "if", a fact that his brothers did not miss.

"You know, between me and Leatherhead and maybe Professor Honeycutt, maybe we won't need to track down the responsible party," said Donnie. "I mean, if this was done by tinkering directly with our genetic code, then I could begin looking into that. But if we're modified clones, that's a whole different path entirely. Likewise, if our minds were merely transferred to these bodies, then I'd begin by monitoring brainwaves. There's just not enough information." He blew out a sigh. "I wish I had an idea where to start."

"Don." Leo, obviously remembering something, touched his hand to the back of his left shoulder blade. "My wound. I still have it."

"What?" Don squinted down at Leonardo's fingers, Mikey's head brushing his as the two of them craned their necks down to see. Against their blue-banded brother's fair skin, the katana scar stood out like a silvery-pink testament to the kind of faith Leonardo kept—misplaced or otherwise—in a place previously concealed by a chipped carapace, utterly adamant in its refusal to ever fully heal.

"Whoever did this to us obviously didn't want to change us too much," Leo murmured, running the pad of his fingers briefly over the wound. "I bet if you checked your thigh, Don, you'd find the cut you got from Bishop's monsters."

Donatello complied, his jaw unhinging as he felt the slightly dented skin—unlike Leo's, all outward reminders of his own wound had faded completely. "Weird."

Leo nodded grimly. "And it's not just old wounds. I still have every callous I've ever gotten from handling my swords. It's probably the same for you guys. If these bodies were manufactured for us, then someone went to a ridiculous amount of trouble to get the physical details right."

"Which you have to be halfway insane to even _think _of doing," said Donnie. "But then that'd mean…"

"…that these really _are _our bodies in the first place?" Mikey finished, his hazel eyes enormous.

Donnie was shaking his head, ready to point out yet again the sheer impossibility of it, but the discussion was interrupted by their fourth brother stomping into the room, mumbling groggily. He stopped at the sight of the three bare-chested teenagers gathered by the railing.

"Damn it." He scrubbed a hand halfway down his face, stopping so that his mouth and the lower part of his nose were concealed behind his fingers. "Guess it wasn't all just a nightmare, then."

"And a good morning to you, too, Raph," Don said good-naturedly.

"Why, Raph, I thought you said you'd eat your sais first before you'd wear those tightie-whities," smirked Mikey, pointing a finger at the skivvies in question.

"Believe me, if I hadn't had enough lookin' at birthday suits to last me the rest of my life, I wouldn't be wearing a damn thing at all," retorted Raphael.

Casey, tragically, had not done his laundry before last night, which left him with a rather skimpy selection of clean underwear. Only three of those were boxer shorts, which the ex-turtles had quarreled long and hard over before deciding on making Raphael the odd man out, stating that since he and Casey were so tight, it stood to reason that he got the leftover briefs. Raphael had caved in the end, though he probably would have put up more of a fight had it not been for the late hour and April's and Splinter's presence.

"How do humans sleep in their clothes without feeling like the inside of an eggroll?" wondered Leo.

"Maybe that's the whole point of pajamas," suggested Donatello. "Ever notice they're comfy and loose? Like the ones April uses."

"Figures you'd notice what April wears to bed," snarked Mikey. Raphael sniggered.

"Maybe we could get some in the meantime," Donnie went on, pointedly ignoring his brothers. "I mean, it _can _get kind of drafty in here. Especially the floor. Ever notice how cold the floor is all of a sudden?"

"Well, I ain't wearing Casey's shoes again," Raphael declared. "It's bad enough I gotta wear his freakin' skivvies. The last thing I need is t'have to borrow the rest of his wardrobe."

"Maybe that's why Master Splinter left earlier than usual to do his morning rounds," Leo said. "He didn't want to trouble Casey and April for more donations."

Mikey let out a disappointed sound. "Aw, I wish he'd let me come along. I wanna be able to pick out my own stuff!"

Donnie drained his cup to the dregs to cover up his amused smile. "Uh, Mikey, it's not like he's going to a mall or something. He's probably gonna just raid a couple of cast-off clothes boxes."

" 'Sides, at this hour usually it'd take a hydrogen bomb to wake you," said Raphael. "Or the sound of me folding your precious _Justice Force #122 _comic."

"That better just be an example!" Mikey shot the redhead a warning glare. "But fine, point taken. But I _still _think I oughta be able to—" Just then his stomach, finally done with being ignored, chose to make a loud discontented rumble. The four of them glanced down in the direction of the offending sound and were reminded that none of them had had a proper breakfast yet.

"Best thing he's said all day," was Raphael's assessment before he turned on his heel to depart for the kitchen. Behind him his brothers vacated the railing to follow him. "We got any grub left in this place? And don't say cereal. The only cereal we got left is that healthy bran crap Leo likes. I'm talkin' _real _food."

"I think we've still got some pizza left over from two nights ago," said Don. "We could reheat that."

"Not with the microwave," Leo advised. "Too soggy. Let's use that toaster oven you fixed up last week."

"Better watch what you eat from now on, Raph," teased Mikey. "Don't want those man-panties cutting off your circulation or anything."

He easily avoided Raphael's retaliatory smack, cackling all the way into the kitchen.

They spent the rest of the morning doing their chores. Leonardo finished his first, as usual, and retired to the dojo to meditate. Donatello got his done eventually, though he kept meandering back to his workstation as though bound to it by an invisible rubber band. Raphael and Michelangelo procrastinated as best as they could—partly because they were too busy test-driving the various little quirks their new bodies afforded them, and partly because it was their turn to clean the living area (a task they both hated). It was nearly noon by the time the both of them got around to it.

Perhaps it was the sheer monotony of the task or the absence of any authority figures, but when Donatello finally managed to tear himself away from his terminal to check on them, his brothers had somehow gone from mopping up the floor to having a full-fledged water fight (Raphael armed with the bucket of suds, Mikey with one of his Nerf water guns). His attempt to quell the fight only got him drenched, and quite vengeful. He went to retrieve a water pistol of his own—a Donatello original he'd designed when he was eleven and could hold five gallons easy—and turned it into a three-way battle.

When Splinter finally returned with three guests in tow, he was treated to the spectacle of three of his sons running about the lair clad only in their underwear, completely soaked and slightly sudsy. Neither Casey nor April knew what to make of the scene, and neither did Angel.

* * *

There were many times that Leonardo wished he could adequately explain to his brothers what a boon meditation could be—if only they didn't start yawning before he'd even managed to get the word out of his mouth. His siblings certainly understood the fundamentals of it; they knew that it could aid in the advancement of their mental faculties, knew that its mastery was essential in order to evolve into full-fledged ninjas, balanced both in body and mind. But they did enough of that in their lessons with Splinter; they certainly didn't need to do it in their spare time when they were free to do other, far more interesting things, like playing videogames and beating up gangsters and tinkering with interesting-looking gadgets. No matter how much Master Splinter and the Shishou harped about it, the truth was that sitting down in the lotus position for hours on end was more a viable method of achieving insanity, not inner peace, and certainly not a higher plane of existence. Meditation was for old people, and for Leonardo, because it was a requisite in his "perfect student" checklist—God forbid he miss one!—and because Leonardo liked boring things.

Leonardo had long since given up trying to convince them that "boring" was the furthest thing it was.

He didn't meditate because not doing so would mean that he would be remiss in his training, or because it made Splinter happy (well, yes, that had been the case when he'd been eight, but not any more). He did it for the same reason Raphael liked to go at it with his punching bag, for the same reason Mikey read comics, for the same reason Don put together machines: it was an escape.

It was his freedom.

In his mind he wasn't confined to the dank underbelly of New York or the shadows that licked its interiors; in his mind he didn't have to hold back, or be perpetually on his guard. In his mind he wasn't a mutant outcast or the hated authority figure or the prodigal son; he could go anywhere he wanted and do anything he pleased. All the doubts that clung to him, all the responsibilities on his teenage shoulders, and all the negativity in his psyche could be lightened, purged, exorcised. When he returned to himself he felt refreshed, as though he'd just slept for hours, ready to face a world that would not grant him anything first without a fight.

He was not yet skilled enough to reach the astral plane at will like Master Splinter, but there were moments—especially during the Tribunal's training—when Leonardo thought he could see flashes of it. But these were rare occurrences, more serendipitous than anything else, and Leonardo was content with that: he knew he had a good many years still to master that aspect.

So when he slipped into his usual meditative trance and found himself in a dreamy, faceless landscape with his dragon suspended before him, he was startled.

He had not seen his avatar—_the you that walks in the spirit world,_ the Shishou had informed him and his fellow acolytes during the training—since the final clash with the demon-Shredder. His chi-amplifying amulet had disintegrated from the sheer effort of the battle, and he himself did not have the decades of training, understanding, and discipline required to summon his spirit totem on his own, a feat not even the Ancient One or Master Splinter could do. Leonardo and his brothers had been initially disappointed by the loss of their new advanced abilities, but they could live with it, especially since they knew that they could one day access them again (albeit after years and years of intense and back-breaking training, which was more dismaying than encouraging, actually).

But there it was, his dragon: a hybrid of the traditional Oriental sort (gracefully serpentine), the standard Western version (haunches and wings), and himself (humanoid arms and plastron-chested). Its scales were the exact color of his turtle skin, its hood, breastplate, and gauntlets the blue of his bandanna, its teeth, claws, knee and shoulder ridges gleaming silver like the swords he wielded. It cut a magnificent, consummate form against the dream-sky, the end-feathers of its enormous wings clicking metallically as they spread outwards like a fan of the finest katana blades.

It was the first time Leonardo had seen it up close and face-to-face; during its previous manifestations he'd been too deep in concentration, or had been distracted by the heat of battle, or had been looking out through the dragon's eyes himself. But he had known instinctively how it looked like, and even though nothing of it was new to him, he could not help but wonder if there was something narcissistic about the ripple of awe he felt in its presence.

The dragon was growling a little, the sound like miniature earthquakes in Leonardo's metaphysical ears, as it studied this intruder who had wandered into his realm more by accident than design. Up close, the dragon's eyes—feral twin pieces of lapis lazuli—were mesmerizing and somehow familiar, and Leonardo could see himself reflected perfectly across them.

He looked down. His hands were three-fingered and green and so were his toes, and he had a plastron again and a shell on his back—everything exactly as it should be. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised: someone else may have altered his physical body, but his own mental perception of himself remained unchanged. On the astral plane, Splinter and the Ancient One had once told him, you were exactly what you thought.

The dragon, apparently satisfied that the intruder was, indeed, its other Self, proceeded to incline its long, elegant neck. It was almost a bow.

Leonardo returned the gesture—a mutual indication of self-acceptance, as it were—feeling overwhelmed and more serene than he had been in a long while.

And then something changed.

The dragon reared back its head and let out a roar so shattering that the surrounding mindscape began to shimmer like a disturbed reflection. Leonardo stumbled back, not so much frightened as confused. Something was wrong with his dragon—that had been a roar of warning, not assertion or anger…

He saw it on the wingtip first, the left one, rolling down the great slashes of its wings like spilled ink. From there it crept onto the dragon's breastplate, then its limbs, then up its neck, swallowing up blue and emerald and silver and spewing up gray and black in its wake. The dragon continued to roar its disapproval of the invasion, beating its wings so severely that its turtle-Self staggered back against the gale-force winds it generated.

Around them the dreamscape plunged into a bloody dusk and began to come apart at the seams.

"_No_!" Leonardo started forward, desperate to aid it. But there was nothing he could do but watch despairingly as all light and color was leached away from his dragon.

_Dragons are purity, and light, and power, _came Master Splinter's voice from the fringes of his memory.

But that there was nothing of that now, nothing but a massive _thing _of potent, roiling darkness. It emanated iniquity and stank of dried blood, a being so foul and intrinsically corrupt that the blue-banded turtle felt bile rise in the back of his throat just looking at it.

The dragon-shaped shadow looked down at him, and its eye color had altered, too; the blue was gone, replaced by two red pupils that glowed in the umbra of its face. It opened its abyss of a mouth as though to speak—

* * *

"Leonardo!"

His eyes snapped open. The dojo walls greeted him, lit a soothing yellow-orange by the surrounding candles. His skin was clammy with sweat, flesh-toned and unfamiliar.

What the shell had _that _been? A warning? A vision? No, he was not yet enlightened enough to receive visions. A dream, then? Wait—had he even dozed off? Leonardo couldn't remember.

Splinter was looking at him from the entrance. If he had noticed anything strange about his son prior to his intrusion, he did not show it. "I apologize for interrupting your meditation," the old rodent began, "but we have guests."

Leonardo unfolded his legs and rose to his feet. Already his respiration had begun to slow down, and the sense of oppression that had practically been suffocating him moments before was dissipating. Before the kindly face of his sensei and the warm familiar glow of the dojo, his nightmare seemed to retreat and lose its potency; now it just might have been a snatch of some late-night horror movie he'd seen a week ago. Leonardo had to mentally laminate the fast-fading image of a shadow dragon and lock it away safely somewhere in the back of his mind so that he would be able to relate the details to Master Splinter later.

But first things first.

"I'll be right there, Master Splinter."

"And Leonardo," his sensei added after a pause, "put some clothes on first."

Leonardo glanced down at the boxers he wore. "I _am _wearing clothes."

"Not by human standards," Splinter said, and the both of them decided to pretend that that he hadn't just told his son to think as a human should.

* * *

End of Chapter Five

* * *

Closing Notes: Yeah, I know I was supposed to have Angel in this chapter, but it was already getting too long, so I had to cut it off at this point. She'll show up in the next chappie, along with the aftermath of the boys' water-fight.

So, um, yes. I had finals for the second and third week of December, the last two forty-eight hours of which I had to function on three hours' sleep. So no, there wasn't much time to write, even during my commute time. And then I got caught up in the holiday chaos after that, where I got a new video game—and you _know _how those suck up your time—and a much-needed breather. And then I saw more of the Lost Season eps, which required me to rewrite certain parts of the fic. Nevertheless, I am _so_ sorry for the wait. Thank you to everyone who's stuck with this so far…assuming there's anyone left. Sigh. At any rate, it was a bit of a chore trying to figure out the chronology of events so that I could finish this chapter. It was Raph who was originally supposed to have the conversation with Leo, but I changed it to Mikey at the last minute (though we'll get more of Raph's perspective in the next installment, and Donnie's after that). We don't really get much of Leo and Mikey interacting, though when they do they're adorable; Mikey, for all his tendencies to play the goof, seems to have a better empathy for his brothers than they give him credit for, and Leo does value his opinion.

At any rate, I am going to start posting smaller chapters. It's the only way I can get this out with some regularity. Probably 50 KB or so for each installment. That should allow me to post maybe every week and a half. At least, until school starts again…

On a slightly related note, anyone looking forward to the new TMNT movie? I think it's cool how the turtles look different from one another, even kind of reflecting features I pictured for their human counterparts (Raphael's much beefier and tougher-looking than his brothers, Mikey's round-faced, round-eyed, and deceptively innocent-looking, Leo's lean and chiseled and emanating those Mr. Intensity vibes, and Donnie's unassuming at first glance but quite good-looking when you really look at him). And Karai—can't forget Karai. I can't wait to see this version of her kick ass and bang heads with Leo yet again.

_**Next:** Angel spills what she knows of the Volpehart story (if she can manage to concentrate surrounded by dripping boys in their underwear), the ex-turtles are forced to hit the mall (pity the mall), and April finds out that she really can't take the guys anywhere._


	6. The Journal

Author's Notes: I can't believe that years after I've gotten over my childhood TMNT obsession, I'd end up writing fic about the new series. All characters, places, and scenarios within belong to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and Mirage Studios.

Inspired by the episode "The Gang's All Here" from the original cartoon. If you know what happens in this ep, then you know what happens here.

* * *

Beasts and Men  
Chapter Six: The Journal  
by Skyle

_The mind is like a moon in the water, the body is like an image in the mirror._  
—Yagyu Munenori, "The Book of Family Traditions—Book II: The Life-Giving Sword"

* * *

  
It was Mikey who'd started it.

That had been the ready-made excuse that sprang to Raphael's lips the moment he realized that his sensei was standing in front of the lair entrance and had a rather excellent view of the watery destruction their little fight had wrought. Before he could actually get the words out, however, he spotted April and Casey standing behind him, and tried his best to infuse the grin that broke out on his face with welcome rather than relief (because Splinter would be less likely to chew them out in front of guests). Then he saw that Angel had accompanied them, and his grin widened.

"Yo, Angel! Long time no see, kid!"

But Angel merely stared at him with an expression he didn't recall ever seeing on her face before. It kind of reminded him of the one girls got when they saw a toad with two heads, or their favorite boy band member. Which made no sense, since Angel wasn't the type to be freaked out by two-headed toads, or moon over boy bands.

He snuck a glance at Donatello and Michelangelo to see if they were as baffled as he was, but they were too busy shifting surreptitiously under the weight of their sensei's gaze. Mikey quickly tucked his Nerf water gun behind his back, as if doing so would exonerate him of all blame, and pasted on his best "I'm-too-cute-for-this-to-be-my-fault" smile. It was only moderately successful: April and Casey actually smiled back, but his sensei was immune as always.

"As you can see," Splinter told their guests dryly, "my sons may have temporarily lost their reptilian appearance, but their talent for avoiding chores has apparently remained intact."

Angel finally blinked—more to keep her eyes from drying out than anything else—and finally managed a throaty "whoa." For a moment Raphael was afraid that she was going to pull a Casey, but then she went on: "I guess you guys weren't kidding, then."

"Heck, _I _thought April was pullin' my leg when she told me 'bout it," Casey admitted with a shrug.

"It's still us, though," Raphael said, partly to mollify Angel—who, for some reason, had not run over for a hug or to grab their arms like she usually did. In fact, she hadn't moved from where she stood slightly behind Splinter.

His words seemed to snap on a switch inside her, however, and she straightened up immediately, arms folded. "I know that!" she retorted. "I was—I was just a little weirded out, that's all. Of course I knew it's you guys. I mean, duh, you got the same voices!"

Angel had come a long way from that wannabe Purple Dragon who had mistaken delinquency for independence, but she still had an edge to her. She wore all her studs and piercings and that hoodie with the torn-off sleeves, and every now and then her street-tough persona would surface, particularly when she felt nervous or threatened. Not that Raphael had the slightest idea why she was falling back on that now, seeing as no one was giving her a hard time and it was just him and his brothers here.

April cleared her throat in a way that was probably meant to be tactful. "Uh…guys," she said, and made a vague flicking up-and-down gesture.

Raphael glanced down at himself. So he was dripping. Big deal. What, did Angel have a phobia of water now or something? There were more than a few soap bubbles popping here on his shoulders and there was a trail of suds working down the pronounced ridges of his abdomen (a six-pack, according to those Bo-Flex ads—not that the expression made any sense), but at least he had underwear on—it wasn't like he was _naked_. Then again, Raphael could personally testify that guys in their skivvies wasn't exactly the prettiest sight in the world. Really, could he blame Angel for being grossed out?

"Fortunately, I have taken the liberty of acquiring some garments," Splinter said, glancing at Casey. The longhaired man looked befuddled for a moment, then remembered the cardboard box he was carrying in his arms. He stepped forward to allow Splinter to pull out a shirt. "I managed to appropriate a few clothes items from some donation boxes that were left outside the nearest shelter."

Raphael scowled at the shirt his sensei pressed into his hands. "It's _pink_," he said flatly.

"Then we shall call it fuschia," Splinter replied without batting an eye. "Since we have guests, it will not do to have any of you run about the lair half-clothed."

"But Master Splinter—"

"Well, perhaps then the next time you drop by Casey's apartment, you will not protest should he choose to wear nothing other than his undergarments."

The redhead blotted the visual from his mind before it had the chance to fully form and therefore traumatize, and snatched the shirt from his sensei's grip, as well as the pair of jeans in his other hand. "Point taken."

"Hey!" Casey protested from behind Splinter, somehow sensing he'd just been insulted.

"Donatello, Michelangelo." Splinter nodded at the two other teenagers as he withdrew a couple more articles of clothing from the box. "I must warn you that the selection is rather limited; I could not in good conscience take too much from people who might need these more than we do."

Donnie and Mikey exchanged reluctant looks, but didn't protest as they accepted a pair of rather questionable outfits: a button-up with canary-yellow pinstripes with tan shorts for Mikey, and a suspiciously fuzzy-looking crewneck with plaited slacks for Don.

"Ewww," was Mikey's succinct verdict. He stuck his tongue out in distaste. "Master _Splinter._"

"I am sorry, Michelangelo, but since I do not subscribe to _Vogue_—and do not even ask me how I even know that magazine, because I do not recall—you will make do with what is here. It took quite a while to find clean ones that looked like they were in your sizes." Splinter turned back toward their guests while the three teens proceeded to wriggle into their respective garments (without even bothering to dry themselves). "I must apologize; my sons were not expecting you to accompany me back to the lair. It appears that we should have called ahead first."

"Oh, no…really, it's fine," April reassured him, ushering both Casey and Angel toward the main chamber. Fortunately, the boys had been canny enough to ensure that their water gunplay had missed the electronics and about half the furniture, though the floor was littered with puddles and various surfaces glittered with strings of soap bubbles.

Splinter shot his sons a look that told them in no uncertain terms to look forward to a second round of housecleaning. As they grimaced guiltily, he asked, "Where is Leonardo?"

"He's in the dojo meditatin'. As usual," Raphael replied.

"I see. Please excuse me," the old rodent said to their guests before leaving to fetch his missing son.

April took the chair diagonal to the couch—the only seat in the room completely free of wet spots—while Casey made himself comfortable on its armrest. Angel sat herself down in the middle of the couch where it was driest, only to start a little as Raphael and Mikey plunked down on either side of her, completely unmindful of the squishy sounds of wet cushion. Donatello elected to remain standing across from the couch, glancing about for a place to put away his Waterminator 2000 (he'd been eleven when he'd named it) while Splinter wasn't looking.

"So, Angel, how've ya been?" Raphael drawled, pushing his wet bangs from his eyes. It really had been a while since they'd all seen her, though it seemed like her freshman year of high school had done her good; she actually looked like she'd grown a little taller now, and had dyed her hair a slightly darker shade of purple.

Angel had scarcely opened her mouth to reply when Mikey shook his wet head like a dog trying to dry itself, scattering droplets everywhere.

"Mikey!" Raphael growled.

The blond-haired teen grinned unrepentantly. "Always wanted to try that," he explained. He turned the brilliance of his grin on Angel and tilted forward, nearly smashing his nose into hers. "Angel! How've you been?"

Raphael snaked an arm behind the speechless girl in order to shove at his brother's face. "I already asked her that, doofus!"

Mikey pouted. "Oh, so _I _can't ask how people are now? What did you do, copyright that question or something?"

"I'm just sayin' you oughta get your own material—"

"Guys," Donnie intervened. "You're getting Angel wet."

His brothers looked down. They'd been leaning over Angel while they bickered, dripping water onto her jeans.

"Sorry 'bout that," Mikey said sheepishly, pulling back.

"Yeah, what he said," mumbled Raphael, withdrawing his arm.

Mikey looked at him indignantly. "Hey! Who's stealing whose material now—"

"You okay, Angel?" Casey asked suddenly. The girl in question had barely spoken—a far cry from the brassy little hellion who'd taken the idea of mutant turtles in stride, and then managed to coerce them into Purple Dragon disguises.

Angel sat up even straighter, which seemed impossible given the already ramrod-straight set of her spine. If she sat any closer to the edge of the sofa she would topple off. "Huh? Of course I am! What makes you think I'm not okay?"

"I dunno. You just seem kinda…off or somethin'," Casey said uncertainly. He would've substituted the word "off" for "like a deer in the headlights", but Angel was at that age where any big-brotherly thing he said was liable to embarrass her for life. "Ya sure nuthin's bothering you or somethin'?"

"I'm _fine_, Casey." Obviously, his attempt at tact didn't work; Angel was glaring at him as though trying to set him on fire through sheer will.

"Okay, okay! Pardon me for askin'! Yeesh!" Casey raised his hands in surrender. He bent surreptitiously down toward April. "I swear, ever since she turned fifteen, she's been touchier than usual," he confided.

April merely raised her eyebrows and smiled.

"Aw, cheer up, Angel. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad. I mean, look at us!" Mikey pointed with both index fingers to his smiling face. "We got turned into humans through mysterious and quite possibly ominous circumstances, but we're not sweating over it. At least, I'm not. So what if I'm totally sensitive now, or that I got hair in weird places?" He thought for a second, then brightened. "You wanna see my hair?"

Before April or Casey could object in alarm, Raphael broke in. "Mikey, she don't wanna see those three or four strands you got." With that, he proffered his adequately stubbly chin to Angel for inspection. "Now check _me _out. I think I could grow a goatee or somethin'. Whaddaya think?"

Again Mikey interrupted before Angel could get a word out. "Ew! A goatee? That's, like, such a clichély evil hair accessory."

" 'Clichély'?" Donnie echoed doubtfully.

Mikey made a show out of stroking an imaginary tuft of hair on his chin and affected a bad Transylvanian accent. " 'Ha-ha! I am Raphael, and I vant to suck yoh blahd! ' "

"Ignore Mikey over there," Raphael told Angel through clenched teeth. "He's just jealous 'cause he can't grow anything worth crap, even with growth hormones and fertilizer."

"I can so do so too!" retorted his fair-haired brother. "I just don't need to grow a hairy chin caterpillar to impress the ladies! I got my own personal charm and 100% naturally grown muscles." He rolled back his sleeve and nudged Angel with his opposite shoulder, flexing his exposed biceps. "Eh? Eh? Impressive, no?"

Angel looked like she didn't know where to focus her eyes, which were starting to resemble little spirals. "I, uh…um…well…"

Casey noticed this with steadily rising concern. "Uh, guys, would ya lay off of her a little? Give her room to breathe or somethin'—"

"Casey!" Angel was staring at him again with her fire-starter expression. "I said I was fine! Stop embarrassing me!"

"I ain't tryin' to embarrass—"

"Well, you are! I'm _fine_. It's just taking me a while to get used to this, that's all! I mean, first they're turtles, and then they're guys…like, guys _guys_—"

"Huh?" said Don.

"What?" Mikey queried, confused.

"You sayin' we weren't guys before?" Raphael demanded. He was probably the closest to Angel out of his brothers (not counting Mikey), but this was a side of her he didn't remember encountering before.

"Yes! I mean, no! I mean…" Angel inhaled deeply as if to fortify herself. "It's just different, okay? Casey and April told me what went down, so it's not like I was completely clueless when I arrived, but I kind of expected you guys to look…more normal, I guess." Her words began to pick up speed, like she was trying to outrun all their questions. "Hey, no offense or anything! I meant—you guys aren't, like, totally ugly. 'Cause that coulda happened, you know. Not that I was expecting you to turn out to be real dogs, though—I'm sure you were all really good-looking as turtles, even though I wouldn't really know anything about that, you know, and don't think that I'm freaking out like some stupid girly girl just 'cause you're all taller than me now and wet and—_oh_, forget it!" she snarled as she caught sight of Leonardo emerging into the main chamber with Splinter at his side.

Leonardo's smile faded slightly at the girl's less than friendly greeting, and he looked at his brothers for an explanation. His expression turned even more puzzled as he noticed their condition. "Why're you guys dripping?" He glanced down as the bare soles of his feet came into contact with puddle-strewn floor. "Why's the floor wet?"

"The usual. Mikey and Raph got an idea," said Don, subtly nudging his Waterminator deeper behind the TV console with his foot.

Raphael managed to tear his attention away from Angel long enough to notice his brother's attire, which happened to be one of Master Splinter's brown yukatas (which was too short for his much taller form; on him it appeared more like a shirt, his black boxers visible past the hem). He couldn't suppress his snort. "Look at'cha. Think you're taking that Splinter Junior thing far enough, bro?"

Leonardo threw him a look as he stood next to Donatello across the couch. "At least I'm not wearing pink."

"It's _fuschia_," Raphael snarled.

"I think it is a great improvement compared to how you were all dressed earlier," said Splinter, taking his place behind the sofa. "Now, I believe my sons have a question to ask you, Angel."

Angel regressed back to her deer impression. "Uh…they do?"

"You know—about that Volpehart guy," Casey said as tactfully and considerately as he could.

"Oh! Right, right. Because, um, that's where _it _happened, right? This whole…" She gestured loosely toward them. "…thing."

Leonardo glanced at his brothers, who appeared to be no closer to understanding her behavior than he. "Right. This…thing."

Angel crossed her arms, the insouciance of which that was belied by the fact that her eyes continued to dart about as if searching for something safe to latch onto. "Well, whaddaya want to know?"

Donnie tried to aid her along. "Remember when we went to that building to rescue your brother, and we left you with Mr. Volpehart while we went down into the caves to look for him?"

"Yeah."

"It took a while before we found him and kicked that alien thingy's shell," said Raphael. "You were with the old man all that time. You gabbed with him, didn'tcha?"

"Yeah…"

"You remember what about?"

"Um, well…we talked a little more about the monster. About how strong it had become, and how he hoped you guys wouldn't underestimate it, because we couldn't even begin to imagine what was capable of."

Leonardo crouched down in front of her so that they were more or less at eye-level. "Did he mention anything more about what it could do? Or whether there were people it did something with other than trap them in pods?"

Angel absently took one of her pigtails and began twirling the end of it around her finger. "I, uh, I don't remember him mentioning anything like that. But he did say that the creature did whatever it took to get what it wanted. That was part of the reason Mr. Volpehart couldn't get rid of it. He said it had used him too much, that his own hands were dirty enough."

"What did he mean?" Donatello wanted to know.

"He—actually, that part kind of bothered me." Angel paused in her finger-twirling. "He said he helped the creature feed…when it couldn't do it on its own. He lured people into the building and into the caves. He said he'd had no choice."

The ex-turtles cringed at the thought of the seemingly harmless old man they'd once allied with voluntarily—desperately?—offering up his fellow human beings to the beast to be absorbed into its nightmarish embrace.

Angel resumed twisting her hair around her finger. "And, um…that's it, really. I think he was too worked up to do anything else to talk. Most of the time he kept pulling out books from the shelves and looking through them. I thought it was to keep himself from going crazy waiting for you guys to come back. And…I guess I was too worried about my brother to pay attention to what he was doing, and maybe some of the stuff he said." She peered up from under her lashes. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," Leonardo said, sounding disappointed even as he spoke.

"There was this one thing, though," Angel added quickly, as if anxious to make up for her dearth of information. "That book he had. You know, the one he read out of when he told you guys about the monster? I got to flip through it a little. It was a journal—C.F. Volpehart's. It was so old I think it even had entries dating all the way back to the 16th century—mostly day-to-day stuff. I don't really remember."

Mikey brightened. "Maybe there might be an entry about the monster being able to turn mutants into humans!"

Raphael glanced over at him, his expression sharply skeptical. "Yeah, Mikey, because the 16th century was just full a' mutant turtles in powdered wigs walkin' around pokin' their beaks into the old man's business."

The fair-haired teenager returned his exasperated look. "I _meant_, Mr. Volpehart must've written down everything that the monster could do. It came from outer space! It put people in pods and messed with their minds and became a multi-zillionaire—who's to say it wasn't able to do more?"

"Good point," April said. "It did understand human physiology enough to lure them into its caves and keep its victims sedate inside those weird pods."

"If that journal did contain everything Mr. Volpehart knew about the creature," mused Splinter, "then perhaps we could use that knowledge to approach this problem in a new way."

Leonardo leaned forward earnestly, his chest nearly touching Angel's knees. "Angel, do you remember anything else about your time with Mr. Volpehart? Anything at all?"

"I…" Angel faltered. She glanced at the blank TV, up at the ceiling, down to her lap, and back to the TV.

"Surely there's more you can remember," encouraged Don, his violet gaze fixed intently on her.

"Um…"

"Look, if she remembered anythin' more, she'd tell ya," Raphael said in her defense, right before draping a casual arm on the sofa cushion behind her. "Right, Angel?"

"Uh…"

Mikey bounced to his feet. He had neglected to button up his hideous yellow shirt, so the tails flapped as he landed next to Leonardo. He grinned brightly down at the girl, hands on his hips. "Hey, don't sweat it. We know you must've been stressed out over your brother at the time."

"Oh, right…" Angel said, sounding as though she were trying to recall whether she even had a brother in the first place. "Um, well, there was this one other thing—I don't think that was the only journal Mr. Volpehart had. It was just the first. I'm pretty sure there were others—like, continuations. There must've been. You guys could look into that," she told Michelangelo's (gleaming and still wet) abs.

"Um, Angel…" Raph couldn't help but butt in, pointing up to Mikey's face. "Mikey's there. Up there."

He could not have been less tactful had he been Casey himself: Angel's face turned red, then white, then an even more alarming red.

"I _know _that! It just happened to be in my line of sight! What am I, some brain-dead bimbo? What's up with all the questions? What _is _this anyway, the Spanish Inquisition?" She leaped suddenly to her feet, causing all four brothers to rear back. "God, don't any of you have any sense of personal space? You're all suffocating me!" She began to stomp off, nearly bowling Leo and Don over in her fury. "And it's so hot in here! Why's it so hot? Is the heater in here on or something? Never mind, I need to breathe…"

Her tirade receded, thankfully, as she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving everyone else to gape after her.

Casey recovered his vocal abilities first. "Now what'd you guys hafta go an' do that for?"

"Us? I don't even know what we did," defended Mikey.

"We _were _kind of crowding her," said Don.

"Yeah, but it ain't like Angel ta go off like that," Raphael pointed out. Angel was one of the very few people that raised his protective hackles, and he was feeling more than a little contrary toward his brothers because of it—especially Mikey, whom he was sure had offended Angel in some unspecified but typically Mikey way. "I mean, if we were crowding her she coulda told us off like she's always done and let that be the end of it. So what the shell was that about?"

"You know what, I'm gonna go talk to her." Casey got to his feet. "Maybe it's nothing. Maybe she just had a bad day at school. April, you smilin' or somethin'?"

April managed to control the strange twitching motions her mouth was making. "Um, no, no one's smiling here."

Casey looked at her a second longer, the synapses in his brain straining to make the right connections, but gave up and left for the kitchen to see to Angel.

He had barely moved out of earshot when Mikey snapped his fingers. "Heyyy…you don't think it's her time of the month, do you?"

His innocent question was met by a legion of alternately disbelieving and outraged looks.

"Michelangelo!" Splinter scolded.

"Mikey!" Leo admonished.

"_Mikey_!" April huffed.

"Idiot," Raphael muttered.

"What?" Mikey whined. "I was just asking!"

Raphael poked an accusing finger into Mikey's stomach. He had one of those pack-things too—slightly less defined than Raphael's, but they were hard enough to easily deflect the latter's finger. "It's _your _fault, ya know. You're the one who scared her off with that belly of yours."

Mikey jumped back and rubbed his abs indignantly. "No, I didn't! And my belly doesn't frighten people! Have you ever thought maybe it's _your _face that frightens people?"

"Hey, if I remember right, I was the only one tryin' to be all understandin'. The rest of you were the ones gettin' all up in her face and making her queasy." Raphael narrowed his eyes as he remembered that even Leo seemed to have temporarily forgotten the concept of personal space. " 'Specially Fearless over there."

Leonardo whipped his head toward him; the movement dislodged locks of hair that half-hid his right eye. He pushed back the errant locks with some vehemence. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hah! And you're supposed to be the sensitive one?" Raphael pointed at him like a lawyer cross-examining a defendant. "What was that with the eyelash-battin' and the kneelin' and the soft talkin'? Maybe _you_ were the one that creeped her out!"

"Maybe we just caught Angel in a bad mood," Donatello suggested, falling back into the role of peacekeeper. "That's all."

"You guys really don't know, do you?"

The four teenagers turned to look at April, their faces registering genuine confusion.

"Huh." April's mouth was making those weird twitchy movements again. "I thought so."

"Know what?" Leonardo asked.

April for some reason got that expression she got when confronted by an extraordinarily unbreakable bit of computer code. Her gaze floated upward. "It's a female thing. Never mind."

As if sensing another imminent question from Michelangelo that involved feminine cycles, Splinter hurriedly spoke up. "At any rate, Angel has been able to provide us with some insight as to our next step. It seems we must consider this journal of Mr. Volpehart's a viable source of answers to our dilemma."

Leonardo rested his elbows on his knees and touched the tips of his fingers together. "April, did you find where the most of the items from the Volpehart Building went?"

"But of course. Okay, according to the online records, most of the contents were put into storage by the managers of the Volpehart estate, except for some paintings which were auctioned off, like you said, and the books in the private office."

"Where are those?"

"Most of them—the less valuable ones—were purchased for donation to the Oroku Saki Memorial Library."

"And the rest?" Leonardo prodded, as if he didn't already know.

April pursed her lips. "The oldest ones are now a part of Oroku Karai's private collection."

There was a brief silence as they all digested the implications of April's findings, broken by what might have been the gnashing of Raphael's teeth.

"So…" Mikey finally said, drawing out the word. "Do we knock on Karai's door and politely ask if we can borrow the journal from her? I mean, it's not like she wants to kill us…that much…nowadays."

"Well, she _is _a lot more reasonable now," Donatello allowed.

Raphael could no longer remain quiet—not when his brothers seemed to be collectively _losing their minds_. "Or maybe she'll realize that she's got the chance of a lifetime when she sees us all weak and fleshy in a building full of freakin' Foot soldiers and won't hesitate ta have us made into turtle soup."

There was a pause, which was ended only by Mikey's tentative: "Uh, dude? We're not turtles any—"

"Shut up, Mikey," growled Raph, annoyed at his own slip.

"Karai doesn't know that," stated Leonardo.

Raphael snapped his head toward his raven-haired sibling. "What?"

"She doesn't know about our change," Leo clarified. A nick appeared between his brows. "At least, she _shouldn't_ know."

"Are you saying that she might have something to do with this?" Donnie inquired, astounded that Leo of all people was the one implying it. More than anyone else, his blue-bandannaed brother had been happily vindicated by Karai's integral role in their battle with the demon-Shredder.

"I didn't say that," said Leo, even as it sounded like he was actually considering the idea for the first time. "I just meant that…if she doesn't know, then there's no reason to let her."

Raphael's brows shot up. "What're you gettin' at, bro?"

"It looks like we really don't have any other choice. We need that journal, and if Karai's got it, then I guess we go through her. But I don't think we should let anyone in on what happened to us."

"So we get the journal without tipping her off?" Mikey said. "That sounds an awful lot like a break-in, Leo."

"Yeah, and it took him almost twenty-four hours to come up with that," Raphael remarked with a healthy measure of sarcasm.

Leonardo stood up, the movement so smooth it looked like he'd merely unfurled his (now long) legs. He did not seem at all happy. "And I still don't like it any more than I did twenty-four hours ago. But so far everything else's turned out to be dead ends. Unless something new comes up or if Donnie finds something in our tests, this seems to be our only option."

"Then you would forget our truce with the Foot?" Splinter said. His bearing was impassive; it was hard to tell whether or not that was disapproval there. "You would forget that our last meeting was on relatively good terms, and that any kind of deception or intrusion of their territory on your part might turn them against us yet again?"

"It won't have to come to that if we do this right," Leo declared with enough confidence to make his siblings sit up straighter. "We'll just take the book and return it as soon as we're done with it. I doubt it's going to be as closely guarded as the Heart of Tengu was; Karai won't even know it's missing. We won't have to confront the Foot and test how fragile this newest truce is."

Splinter tilted his head. "Are you certain that there is no other recourse? You would prefer to choose deception and not simply ask Karai to see the journal?"

"The less people who know about this the better," replied Leonardo. "If she had nothing to do with this, then no harm, no foul. But someone sealed off the secret passage in the Volpehart Building. We don't know yet who. If it turns out Karai was the one who did it, and that she's the one behind this, then we'll be on the alert and we'll at least have another place to look for answers. Besides," he added thoughtfully, "I wouldn't mind assessing the Foot's status. We may not strictly be enemies now, but better safe than sorry. Call it defensive reconnaissance."

"Oooh…sounds official," cooed Michelangelo. "Mikey like."

"Now _that's _more like it," Raphael drawled. It didn't happen often, but whenever he and Leo were on the same page, he got these weird sappy vibes that made him want to do something lethally humiliating, like hug his brother, or something. Then again, maybe it was a good thing it didn't happen often.

The old rodent still did not seem entirely appeased, but it was clear he could not counter their arguments either. "I must admit I am not comfortable with returning their current goodwill with theft, as minimal as it may be."

"It's technically not stealing if we plan to give it back," said Donatello, almost paraphrasing his words from the night before when the four of them had been sorely tempted to filch those garments hanging on those clotheslines. "It's more like borrowing, sensei."

Splinter closed his eyes and sighed. "Very well. If there is no other way..."

Just then Casey and Angel returned from their sojourn into the kitchen. Angel's expression was an odd mix of sheepishness and defiance as Casey steered her back toward the group.

Splinter rapped the end of his stick against Mikey's bare stomach, a silent order, and his son scrambled to properly button his shirt. Leonardo and Donatello backed up, neither one wanting to deprive their teenaged guest of the space she obviously held in high importance. Raphael edged closer to the side of the couch to give her maximum breathing room.

"Hey, guys," Casey called out cheerfully, shepherding his reluctant charge back into the living room area. "Don't worry. Casey Jones got everythin' under control. Ain't that right, Angel?"

Angel mumbled something no one could catch, rolling her eyes as she did so.

"Turned out she had a hard day at school, like I thought," Casey went on, unrelenting in his cheer. "So go easy on her, 'kay?"

April stared at Casey as he reclaimed his seat, her eyebrow cocked meaningfully. He grinned at her, completely oblivious to the question she was attempting to telegraph, and April gave up.

"Uh, sure, Case," Raphael said, mostly to humor him. He didn't quite buy his friend's explanation, but he wasn't about to upset Angel any further. "You all right, kid?"

Angel fell back down on the couch beside him and folded her arms. " 'Course I am," she shot back, and punched his arm for good measure. She was beginning to sound like herself again, Raphael thought, even though she still wasn't looking directly at any of them for some reason.

"Yeah, listen, I'm sorry for whatever my bonehead brothers did ta you earlier."

He was promptly lanced by glares from his aforementioned bonehead brothers—particularly Mikey, who said darkly, "Yeah, and Raph's sorry, too."

Raphael summoned up a glare of his own. "And Mikey apologizes for that fat belly of his."

"And Raphael apologizes for that ugly face of his."

"Guys, it wasn't anything any of you did. Really." There was a strange cherry tint to the Angel's complexion, which Raphael thought might be due to her not being used to the humidity of their new lair. "I'm just not myself today. So just drop it, okay?"

Mikey and Raph obediently clammed up, while Donnie and Leo looked more puzzled than ever.

"Uh…so, um, don't let me interrupt what you guys were talking about," Angel went on, seemingly eager to keep the conversation flowing. "What's the plan? Are you hitting the Volpehart Building again, or what?"

"Actually, we're hitting Foot Headquarters," Donatello said.

"Again?" Casey asked.

"Again," said Leonardo resignedly.

"Damn." Casey leaned back on his armrest. "So this's, what, your fiftieth Foot headquarters break-in?"

"Feels like it," quipped Mikey. "Hey, at least we can say we got plenty of practice!"

"Doesn't mean it gets easier," Leonardo reminded them. "The building schematics could've changed again after what the demon-Shredder did to it."

"Say what you will about the Foot, but they do not make the same mistakes. At least, not when it comes to security measures," warned Splinter. "We are not going to be able to infiltrate that building the same way twice."

Donnie ran a hand through his almost-dry hair, dispersing a fine mist. "Well, I know they've got the underground routes closed off and unless we blow the power source, every shaft, pipe, and vent in that place is going to be rigged with lasers."

"Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be that easy to get to the power room now, or even the furnace," Mikey added.

"They probably got helicopters and hovercraft guarding the roof and surrounding buildings, even," said Raph.

"And with Baxter off the payroll, the security system's probably been re-programmed by Chaplin, which rules out any online contributions I could make, and somehow I don't think Casey and I would be able to pull off our usual mole/decoy schtick," April told them. "All the guards—heck, maybe even the janitors and messengers—probably have our faces memorized by now."

"Well," Casey said slowly, "maybe they got me and April's faces memorized, but not the ones you guys got now."

The four ex-turtles traded glances.

"Unless the Foot was in cahoots with the Volpehart monster, they shouldn't be able to recognize us," Donnie said with conviction.

Mikey was sniggering. "You know, if you think about it, it's kinda funny. We could walk right through the front doors of Saki Enterprises and no one'd ever know we're the reason that building's always under construction."

Casey chortled. "That'd be—whaddaya call it? Ironic karma?"

"This could be our easiest break-in yet," crowed Raphael. "We could stroll right in under their noses, grab the book, and leave, and no one'd be the wiser."

But Leonardo was scowling. "_No_. We are not just going to stroll right in. Have you forgotten that the Foot have been fighting with the Utroms for years, and the Utroms _looked _human? Their security's not going to roll over for us just because we suddenly look like everyone else."

Raphael looked incredulous. "Fer cryin' out loud, Leo. What, now you want we should bust in as usual?"

"I just meant that since the fact that we're unrecognizable is just about the only advantage we've got in these new bodies, we should try and keep it that way."

"The art of stealth and disguise," observed Splinter. "Very good."

"Somethin' tells me those headbands a' yours ain't gonna cut it this time," Casey pointed out. "If you guys really wanna go incognito, you're gonna have ta spring for brand new costumes or somethin'."

Mikey perked up, his hazel eyes growing even rounder. "Costumes? Whoa—that means we get to have real secret identities, like actual superheroes!"

"Down, Mikey." Donatello clamped a hand on Mikey's shoulder. "I think he means something like Foot uniforms."

The strawberry blond stuck his pinky finger into his ear (pausing half a second as he realized that it actually _fit_), wriggled it, and pulled it out. "What'choo talkin' about, Willis?"

"I know it doesn't sound appealing, but think about it: they cover from head to toe _and _we don't need to get rid of our weapons once we're in them. It's almost foolproof."

Donnie might as well have suggested they dress up in diapers and frilly baby bonnets, judging from the expressions on everyone else's faces. But, as usual, no one could fault his logic.

"It's gonna feel so wrong wearin' something with the Foot insignia on it," Raph grumbled.

"I know, Raph. But desperate measures and all that," Leonardo said. He managed a wan smile. "Besides, we've already worn Purple Dragon threads; we might as well go the distance."

"Ugh! And I spent an hour in April's tub tryin' to wash the stink of Purple Dragon offa me last night, too. We'll hafta strip naked and roll around in bleach and antiseptic after this one."

Angel made some sort of noise that was half-cackle, half-squeak. Everyone turned to look at her. She stared back defensively. "_What_?"

Splinter saved her by offering his own two cents. "You will still need to procure those uniforms from the Foot themselves. In addition, you will need to be certain of the location of the Volpehart journal inside the building."

"Well," Leonardo said thoughtfully, "if it's part of Karai's private collection, then it should be in her personal study. If I remember right, last time I was there, it was filled with books. Old, rare books—first editions, manuscripts, even scrolls. Odds are that's where she's keeping the journal."

"But if there're that many books," said Donnie, "then unless the journal's locked away in some glass case, we're going to need a fair amount of time to search through the entire collection. Even if we were disguised as Foot soldiers, it'd be kinda suspicious if we get caught sifting through Karai's stuff."

"Then you will need some kind of lengthy distraction," said Splinter.

"Like a party," April blurted out. She waved off the quizzical looks she was being pelted with, eager to explain. "The Oroku Saki Memorial Library is having a benefit tomorrow night to preserve rare books. The mayor's supposed to be the guest of honor. I remember reading it while I was tracking down the Volpehart items. I'm an idiot—I can't believe I forgot."

"Aw, don't worry, babe. We all got our ditzy moments now an' then," Casey reassured her.

April reached over and hit/love-tapped his cheek, while Donnie latched onto this new detail with enthusiasm. "April, that's perfect! Karai'll have to play host and we'll get a couple of hours to locate that journal."

Mikey let out a whoop, throwing up his arms. "Finally, a coincidence that's on our side!"

"Well—barring an underground spaceship launch, Bishop interfering, and Shredder's asteroid crashing into the middle of Manhattan—we should be able to pull this off no problem," remarked Leonardo. He almost looked like a different person; for the first time since joining them from the dojo, he was smiling a smile that reached his eyes.

Everyone seemed to be too busy smiling goopy smiles of their own, so Raphael slouched down the couch and rapped his black-haired brother with the side of his calf. "Ever the optimist, eh, bro?" he said dryly.

"Cautious optimist." Leonardo ditched the smile for a look of determination as he slipped into leader mode. The overall effect was somewhat marred by the fact that he was still dressed in that undersized yukata with Casey's black boxers peeking out from underneath. "Okay, tomorrow we launch this retrieval operation. The key here is discretion. We use the crowds to make our way inside, grab some Foot uniforms, put them on, make our way up to Karai's private study, find the journal, and slip out like we were never there in the first place."

"Piece of cake," said Mikey confidently. He paused. "Well, it _sounds _like a piece of cake when you put it like that."

"Uh, I got a question," Angel blurted out, snagging everyone's attention. "Are you planning to go in half-naked?"

There was a short but absolute quiet.

"I _meant_," Angel rushed on, her face angrily crimson, "if you're gonna sneak into this fancy frou-frou party, you're gonna have to be wearing something better than Casey's stuff."

"Hey! What's wrong with my stuff?" demanded Casey.

"We could pose as part of the catering crew, like Casey did that one time," Donatello said.

"You'd still need a tuxedo jacket or something," April said. "A benefit like this, even the waiters'd be dressed to the nines. Suit jackets, nice shoes, that kind of thing."

"Where're we gonna get those?" Mikey wondered.

"You guys could rent your suits," said Casey. "That's what I do whenever I gotta go to one of those black-tie restaurants April likes."

April gawked at him. "What happened to that suit I got you for your birthday?"

"You got me a suit? Oh, you mean _that _suit! I thought you were talking about some other…um…it's somewhere in my closet…I just don't wear it 'cause it's kinda scratchy, and tight at the throat…don't get me wrong, I love that thing but…" Casey squirmed on his armrest and raised a finger to try and tug at his collar, except his tank top didn't have one. "Oh, yeah, and speakin' of shoes, the guys'd probably need those, too."

The diversion worked; everyone (save for April, who was still regarding Casey with displeasure) looked down at the aforementioned teenagers' bare feet.

"All we have are April's flip-flops. Maybe they'll be too dazzled by our tuxedos to notice if we wear flip-flops?" Mikey said hopefully.

Raphael curled his lip. "Bein' stuffed into a monkey suit I can take, but I draw the line at appearin' in public in April's sandals."

April folded her arms, annoyed at the lack of grateful males in her life. "Well, you're not going to get in with just socks on your feet."

Leonardo turned to the longhaired vigilante. "Is it possible for you to set us up with some shoes, Casey?"

"I dunno, Leo; I got one good pair—it's imitation leather, cost me almost sixty dollars—but that's it. I ain't the fancy shoes type; give me a pair of good old-fashioned American sneakers anytime. 'Course, those snobs at the benefit wouldn't appreciate a good pair a' shoes unless they had a bunch of wussy tassels on them."

"Why don't you guys just go and buy your own shoes?" Angel suggested.

It took the ex-turtles and their rodent sensei a couple of seconds to fully comprehend what she was saying.

"Ya mean, like, go into a store and give cash in exchange for 'em?" Raphael said slowly, as if it were all an exotic alien process. Which it was, really.

"Why not? You can pull it off now, and you'll get shoes that'll actually fit. Besides, weren't you talking about a shoe sale at the mall earlier, April?"

"The mall?" Mikey repeated, somehow making those two words sound like he'd just said "Holy Land".

"Michelangelo," Splinter chided softly. "We have infringed enough on Miss O'Neill's generosity without asking that she spend money on us."

"Oh, I don't mind," April protested, determined to do the boys a favor that they might actually appreciate. "Really. It's been a good week for my store, and it _is _a 40% off sale." She pressed the pad of her index finger against her jaw, thinking. "Maybe I could even get you guys your own pants and some proper underwear."

Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo's faces were frozen somewhere between gratitude and horror, but all Donatello could concentrate on was the fact that April had just offered to buy him pants. And underwear.

"Actually, we've got a little cash of our own," he volunteered, startling them all with the louder-than-usual volume of his voice. "You don't have to pay for anything."

Beside him Leonardo looked askance; he'd probably expected Don to decline. The purple-bandannaed teen had never been much for topside jaunts unless they involved scavenging for tech or something educational.

Raphael shrugged. He didn't want his brothers to think he was all excited about this, even though he was secretly curious—plus, it meant that he would have a free pass from living room cleanup. "Yeah, sure. Whatever."

"If you all to accompany O'Neill on this endeavor, then I would very much prefer that you all be on your best behavior," said Splinter. "Which would include trying not to draw any undue attention to yourself, regardless of your current appearances."

It was the old rodent's turn to be on the receiving end of Leonardo's stare. "You don't mind that we're going to be somewhere as crowded as a mall?"

"Leonardo, when you were little, I took the four of you topside every Halloween. I knew the risks, but I also knew that it was something you needed." Splinter moved away from the back of the sofa and touched the end of his raven-haired son's sleeve. "After the events of the past twenty-four hours, I believe this is what might be needed."

Leonardo blinked down at him, then at the others. April was smiling, her fingers entwined with those of Casey (obviously having forgotten their earlier tension over the suit), who was perched on the edge of his armrest. Angel was actually smirking at him in challenge, seemingly having recovered from whatever it was that had been bugging her earlier. His brothers wore similarly expectant looks.

"We probably don't even have to stay there an hour," said Don encouragingly.

Mikey materialized at Leo's side; he seemed to be stuck in some bouncing loop, and had to grab onto his sibling's sleeve as if to anchor himself. "Can we, Leo? Can we? Once-in-a-lifetime chance, remember?"

Leo surrendered. "All right, all right. You guys go pick out shoes and some clothes, and I'll stay here in the lair and hammer out the details of the plan for tomorrow."

His automatic self-omission from this particular venture up into the outside world might have surprised Casey, April, and Angel, but to his siblings it was a predictable Leo-response.

"Over my dead body yer stayin' here," Raphael declared. "If I gotta be stuck in a mall to be pushed and shoved by sale-crazy maniacs, then so do you."

"Yeah, _Leooo_…" wheedled Mikey, somehow managing to split the shortened version of his brother's name into several syllables.

"It'll be hard for us to get you stuff that'll fit if you don't come," Donnie added for good measure.

"Our sizes aren't that different. I won't mind." Leonardo held up a hand before April or Casey or Angel could voice a convincing argument. "Someone's got to stay here and keep an eye on things. Sorry, guys." He crossed his arms and subjected them all to his best Leader Glare. "I'm not going."

* * *

"I can't believe you talked me into going," Leonardo groused, no doubt thinking that his Leader Glare needed work.

Donatello grinned at him. "Oh, come on, Leo. Would you really have left us to explore a strange new world on our own?"

He wasn't exaggerating all that much; in broad daylight, with this many people present while the establishment was actually in operation, the mall might as well have been Mars to them. They'd visited public places before, but densely populated sites with non-winter clothing and more-than-adequate lighting was something else entirely.

For Donatello it was a fascinating environmental study: from what he'd seen from MTV or the occasional after-school special, malls functioned as sort of like the social and financial hub of a modern human community. Alternately sullen and high-spirited adolescents gathered here to lounge about and window-shop; blank-faced professionals stopped by to stock up on small supplies and indulge in brief siestas; shrieking kids towed their frazzled parents from one end of the place to the other. Everything—from the diverse smells to the omnipresent shininess to the occasional smiling employee (yes, they'd actually _smiled _at him) exhorting him to take a free treat from a newly opened food stall or fill out a sweepstakes form to win a brand new SUV—was so foreign and unreal that Donatello felt like he'd had hijacked someone else's body and was looking out through his eyes.

His own brothers' reactions were almost as interesting to note (though it was quite similar to how they had conducted themselves the first time they'd been teleported off-planet). Raphael had his hands in his jeans pockets—probably to distract himself from trying to clutch the sais he'd had to leave at home—trying his best to look uninterested even as he snorted and smirked at everything that deserved it. Leonardo kept glancing around, a survival tactic as much as a sightseeing one, but even his expression of complete alertness—as if he were fully anticipating that someone amongst the hordes of mall-goers would suddenly awaken to the fact that oversized mutant turtles were stalking their midst—was interspersed with flickers of wonder.

And Mikey? Mikey had been reduced to a human-shaped blur—Donnie could swear that he was at the front of the group, behind the group, and making a beeline for that nearby store, all at once. No sooner would he spot something he had to get at least three inches close to when he'd spot something else even more interesting; it was all anyone could do to keep him in focus.

April, for her part, did an admirable job chaperoning them all, though admittedly she might have had it easier if Casey or Angel had been able to accompany her—Casey had promised a friend of his months ago to do a repair job for him, and Angel had a tutoring appointment that afternoon, and neither one was happy about being left out. Part of Donatello didn't mind; as far as he was concerned, having April all to themselves for their first proper jaunt outside as humans was perfectly fine as far as he was concerned.

So here they were, two and a half hours into their great mall adventure, and they'd only now just reached the men's section of JC Penney's. (For every ten steps it seemed like one of the boys would see something that they absolutely _had _to check out, and April simply hadn't had the heart to refuse them anything their first day topside.) After picking out their shoes—a long, grueling, and infinitely confusing process—she went off to pay for their purchases, temporarily leaving the four teenagers on their own.

It was strange, Donnie thought as he stood in the eye of a human storm, how the midst of a local mall could feel more alien than any of the extraterrestrial worlds they'd walked on. He still couldn't believe that they were in plain sight and people were all going about their everyday business and not screaming, or pointing at them, or staring at them—

"Someone's starin' at us again," Raphael growled, jerking his head to the left.

Leonardo snapped his head around so suddenly it was a wonder he didn't get whiplash. Donatello looked, too, and saw only a trio of giggling teenaged girls lingering at the entrance.

"Why're they laughing at us?" wondered Don, feeling his ego deflate a little. He was pretty sure they were all wearing clothes that matched this time (a combination of the Purple Dragons' less offensive threads, picks from Casey's wardrobe, and the fruits of Splinter's foraging). He tried to remember if there was some kind of mandatory human accessory that they'd all forgotten to put on before leaving the lair.

"I dunno, but they're tickin' me off," Raphael said.

Leonardo, seeing that the girls posed no immediate threat, promptly lost interest and went back to scanning their surroundings.

"They're not laughing _at_ us," Mikey said boldly, and sent a wink and smile in the girls' direction. To Donnie's amazement, they instantly went beet-red and fled into the adjacent store, squealing all the way. Mikey turned back to his bemused siblings. "See?"

Donatello shook his head. Sometimes he wished he had Mikey's audacity when it came to people.

April called to them from the counter. "Hey, guys, could you give me a hand with these?"

Donnie practically vaulted over the bench and managed to zigzag through his fellow shoe-shoppers (which was somewhat easier without his shell, _and _he didn't have to worry about any of them looking too close). He swept all four boxes from April with a triumphant flourish.

"Really, Don, you don't have to take it all," April assured him, reaching out to steady the pile of boxes.

"No, it's my pleasure." Donnie decided he liked the look of her hand next to his, the matching paleness of their skin.

April withdrew her hand far too prematurely. "So, guys, ready to pick out your own clothes?"

"Are we ever!" Michelangelo bellowed, and took off like a shot.

At least, he would have, if Leonardo hadn't nonchalantly snagged his hoodie.

"Let's figure out where exactly we're going first, shall we?" said his brother. "Less chance of getting sidetracked."

"Dude, there are so many choices!" Mikey settled down and began to tick off on his fingers. "Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Diesel, Banana Republic, Hollister, Armani Exchange, Hot Topic…the possibilities are more abundant than they've ever been!"

His brothers looked at him like he'd just babbled in ancient Aramaic. None of their lessons involved clothing brands, and so it was only Michelangelo who'd attempted to rectify this oversight, thanks to his greater exposure to MTV, Bravo, and various teen catalogs and magazines.

"Um, well…not all of those brands have stores in this mall, but I'm sure the men's section in here carries most of them," said April. "We better hurry up, though. We can't spend three more hours picking out clothes when we still need to get you guys underwear."

As Donatello wrestled to keep his suddenly shaky tower of shoeboxes upright, Leo suggested, "Why don't we split into two groups, then? It'll go faster that way."

"Good idea, bro." Mikey tiptoed beside Leo and leaned in confidentially. "And ix-nay on April touching our underwear-way, okay?"

"Um…okay, guys, here's how we'll do it. April, you and Raph and Don go check out clothes and Mikey and I'll grab the underwear. _What_, Mikey?" he asked impatiently as his brother wagged his head madly from side to side and made x-shaped gestures with his hands.

"I protest against letting Raph have a say in what we wear!" Mikey declared dramatically. "He'll take nothing but leather and clothes with skulls and spikes all over 'em. We won't be able to move without impaling ourselves…or making funny sounds every time we move. We'll all look like leather-wearing pirate cactsuses that squeak a lot!"

"Cacti," corrected Don.

"Whatever!"

"At least I'd pick stuff that won't make us look like complete wimps," sneered Raphael. "Like, if we put Donnie in charge, we'd all end up with freakin' labcoats or somethin'."

"Hey! I resent that remark!" Donatello protested. "Why would I buy you all labcoats? You guys wouldn't even be caught anywhere near a lab! I mean, give me more credit than that!"

"Maybe Raph's got a point," Mikey said thoughtfully. "You'd probably pick out something nerdy in corduroy and plaid."

Donnie reared back, miffed. "What's wrong with plaid?"

"All right." April waved her hands in a pacifying manner. "Leo, why don't you come with me instead and help pick up—"

But Mikey let out an abject gasp. "Oh, no! Not Leo! Anyone but Leo!"

"Why not?" Leonardo asked, sounding slightly offended.

His brother jabbed a finger at him. "Because you think a bathrobe passes as something you'd wear in public!"

"For the last time, Mikey, it's called a yukata_, _and it's an accepted garment in—"

"—the thirteenth century? I believe that! And don't get me started on those skirts you seem to like—"

Leonardo pursed his lips, eerily mimicking the sulky male underwear model on the ad stand right behind him. "Those aren't skirts! They're hakama. Usagi wears them!"

"Yeah, well, sorry, bro, but your taste in clothes're, like, a couple thousand years behind the times." Michelangelo made a dismissive little flippy motion with his wrist.

"That's not true! I can pick out something modern and functional like everyone else!"

"Aha!" The fair-haired teen leaped forward and invaded his brother's space with a wag of his finger. "There's that word 'functional'. To you 'functional' means cloth that's cut and sewn in the right shape and has holes for the neck and arms. You wouldn't care less if it was Armani or some ripoff from Bubba's Clothing Empire!"

"What?" Leonardo, in a strange moment of role reversal, looked completely lost.

"I believe I've made my point." Michelangelo stepped back, reveling in the rare high of having out-argued his blue-wearing brother.

April heaved a sigh. "Okay, okay! Michelangelo, you come with me—"

This time it was Raphael who raised an objection. "Over my dead body! I refuse ta look like one of those airhead boy banders on the Disney Channel!"

"I'm not particularly looking forward to being dressed in what Mikey thinks is high fashion," Donatello admitted. "I mean, no offense, Mikey, but I'd rather be comfortable in my clothes instead of being worried I'll sit wrong or spill machine grease over them."

Mikey looked distressed. "I can't believe you're all perfectly willing to decline my help when I'm the only one among you guys with any sense of actual _style_."

"Yeah, _Zoolander _style," muttered Raph.

"I'm not looking forward to what you pick, either," Donnie informed him.

"What? You sayin' my style ain't good enough for the geek squad?"

"I'm just saying—"

"At least _my _clothes won't have chains as a fashion accessory—"

"I don't see what's wrong with 'functional'—"

April had no wooden walking stick with which to rap the floor with, so instead she whistled. The boys' bickering immediately ground to a halt.

"You know what, _you _guys pick out what you want to buy. Remember, we're on a budget, so two shirts and one pair of pants each. I, meanwhile, am going to go and get you all underwear."

And before any of them could stop her, she whirled around and sauntered off to the other end of the men's section.

"Well, _I've _got no problem with her taste in underwear," Mikey proclaimed to the world in general.

"I guess if someone had to pick our underthings, we could do worse than April," conceded Leo.

"Yeah, Casey told me she bought him skivvies," said Raphael, grimacing. " 'Course, I told him that was way too much information, but he was kinda plastered and holdin' up this leopard print thong—"

"_Breathe_, Don," Leo said again.

* * *

Even with their newfound fashion freedom, it was still a bear trying to figure out how, exactly, they were supposed to conduct the whole buying-clothes process. There were sizes to consider, and measurements, and tailoring and fit: things they'd only had to think about in theory. And then there were the color palettes, materials, and brand names—Michelangelo insisted that there existed a stringent set of rules of dress that had to be followed or else risk becoming social pariahs.

"No, no, no! Stripes with those pants? Are you _blind_, man?"

His brothers stood in front of the changing rooms, dressed in their initial choices. Cradled in their arms and scattered across their feet were boxes and hangers. Judging from their wardrobe, not one of them had paid attention to his extremely helpful discourse on style.

Donnie glared, crossing his arms over his otherwise trendy striped Diesel shirt. "Here's a thought, Mikey: why don't you apply your alleged sense of style to your own clothes instead of everyone else's?"

Mikey sniffed. "Well, excuse me for trying to keep my bros from committing fashion felonies! Raph, you look like you've been marooned in the eighties! And Leo—what did I tell you about wearing that particular shade of blue? That's not gonna bring out your eyes!"

Leo rolled his shoulders, paying only the most perfunctory of glances to the mirror across. "Sorry, Mikey, but I'm more concerned about the actual covering-my-torso part than the bringing-out-my-eyes part."

Mikey threw up his arms in exasperation and began to retreat toward the changing rooms. "Augh! I swear, there's nothing more frustrating than curbed genius!"

"What he's got is a curbed brain," confided Raph, clutching possessively at the collar of this absolutely bitching motorcycle jacket he'd found (which Mikey had accused him of stealing from Brett Michaels back when he'd been musically relevant).

"He did sound like he knew what he was talking about. I mean, I didn't even recognize half the brand names he recommended," Don said with a touch of awe.

"You know," Leonardo said, "I'm starting to miss the days when our clothing options were trench coat, winter trench coat, and thick woolly sweater."

He found himself missing them even more when Mikey took full advantage of his expanded range of options by trying on seemingly every possible clothing combo in the store. Unfortunately (for his brothers), his physique and coloring afforded him substantial compatibility with every outfit—a fact the salesgirls did little to discourage. When April returned bearing packs of undergarments, Mikey was still trying to decide on his second shirt and pair of pants. So she went to join his brothers—who had forgotten to be ill at ease and were edging toward near-catatonia—on the bench in front of the changing rooms.

"Sometimes I wonder," mumbled Raphael, watching through his fingers as his fair-haired brother posed and preened before the mirrors.

Yet another salesgirl sashayed by, drawn to the scene like a lion to a kill. "Hello. Are—"

"We ain't related to him," Raphael said immediately. "Never seen him b'fore in our lives."

April elbowed him, then smiled tiredly up at her. "No, that's all right. I think he's got more than enough help."

The salesgirl returned her smile and—somewhat regretfully—left them to assist the customers who actually were in need of help. Mikey didn't even notice; he was still busy checking himself out in yet another new outfit.

"Guys," he called out brightly as he peered into the mirrors, "do you think this shirt makes my complexion look washed-out?"

Raphael finally lost it. "That is _it_! Lessee how much he cares 'bout lookin' washed-out once I've added a coupla colors t'his complexion!"

Donatello held out a placating arm. "Come on, Raph, let him enjoy this. Sure, watching him conduct his own personal Mr. Universe pageant in front of the changing rooms isn't exactly our idea of a good time, but we can wait a little longer. Right, Leo? Um...Leo?"

"What?" Leonardo stopped fingering his bangs and wrenched his gaze away from the Supercuts outlet across. "Oh, ah, right. But if he doesn't settle on something after thirty minutes, we're going to buy him a trench coat and a woolly sweater and that's it—"

"Perfect!" Michelangelo roared, making them all jump. He swaggered over, dressed in an orange-and-black shirt and designer jeans that actually didn't look bad on him at all. He struck a suave model-ish pose. "I have made my decision! Ahahaha! Tyrese, eat your heart out!"

"Who the hell is Tyrese?" came the mutter from Raphael, but April's exclamation of gleeful relief easily drowned him out.

"Wow, Mikey, you look great!" she enthused. "And I'm not just saying that because I'm glad we can finally get out of here!"

"Really?" Mikey's grin quickly took on a debonair slant. He sidled over to April's side and let his head cant slightly forward to let his hair fall roguishly across his temples like he'd practiced in the mirror. "Sooo…think I look good enough to start riots?"

April thought that it was just coincidence when a couple of young girls ran by screaming. She began to rethink that conclusion when a middle-aged couple and group of seniors huffed past. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leonardo leap to his feet and unconsciously assume a battle stance.

"Umm…" Michelangelo glanced after the fleeing people, then down at his outfit. "I can't be _that _drop-dead gorgeous, can I?"

Two young males ran by, shrieking. They were followed by several of the salesgirls who'd assisted Mikey earlier. Outside the store, people seemed to be unfurling toward the exits in screeching waves.

"What the shell—?" Raph breathed.

April was no girly-girl, but even she couldn't suppress the instinctive yelp of repulsion as a rat darted past her foot. It was followed by another, and another, until April was practically scaling the nearest ex-turtle, who just happened to be Donatello.

Somewhere outside the store came a familiar and somewhat mad peal of laughter.

April looked down at the writhing, squeaking brown-and-gray river, then back up at the boys' bemused expressions, and couldn't hold back a resigned sigh.

"I really _can't _take you guys anywhere, can I?" she said.

* * *

End of Chapter Six

* * *

Closing Notes: Um, yes…so it's been more than a year between installments, but, you know, I've got college and Real Life and stuff happening, so I kind of lost the characters' "voices" for a while. I can't write properly when that happens; it took a long while (and a protracted re-watching of the original series and the first four seasons of the new series) to get them back so I could continue writing. The holiday break helped a lot, too. My apologies to those whose comments I never answered (I don't even remember which ones I missed!). If there's still anyone who's reading this, I'm grateful. And amazed.

Well, I can't say anything more without coming up with more excuses or apologies, so drop me a comment or let me know if I've got a typo or something. This time I'll do my best to answer. I'm no longer gonna make promises on how long the next chapter's gonna take—something tells me I won't be able to keep my word—but I do have an outline of the entire story already written down in my laptop, as well as snippets from upcoming installments and an artwork or two. This thing just might be completed yet.

_**Next: **The boys get their first real combat test in their new human forms (without their weapons), the Foot Headquarters break-in plan gains traction, and an old enemy starts getting suspicious._


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